Tidus' Adventures in Traverse Town
by C.B. Magique
Summary: There was one extra survivor of the Heartless Storm on the Destiny Islands. Tidus finds himself in Traverse Town and is practically forced to work as a tinkerman at the Gizmo Shop. Life in such a miserable town is not as miserable as it seems at first.
1. What Happened to My Islands?

**This story is taking place during the events of KH1 (although that should be apparent) with the common speculation question of 'what if Tidus went to Traverse Town?' I know, kinda old hat but I wanted to try the idea.**

**Also, the plot points from this story converge with the plot points of Princess Story and Altered Memories - other fanfics of mine. It doesn't affect this story at all but you might want to read this before you read Altered Memories or you might find yourself getting to chapter 12 and thinking "what?"  
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**Disclaimer: I only do this once so pay attention! Kingdom Hearts is joint property of Square Enix and Disney and I'm only borrowing their characters and ideas for non-commercial purposes. Now enjoy the story!  
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* * *

**What Happened to My Islands?**

One more night meant one more embarrassing situation for Tidus. A concerned islander knocked politely albeit persistently on his front door. Tidus knew exactly what this was all about and wondered if he could lock himself in his room and pretend to be asleep already. No, that wouldn't work. He had the radio on since the TV wasn't working (again) and the lights were still on in the living room where he sat brooding on the woven mat on the floor. He looked over at the back door. There was no one there – he could see through the wooden crosshatch wall and the fly screen door – so he might be able to sneak out and escape through the mangroves right outside. But that situation was a bit more mess and bother than was worth something like this that happened pretty much every night.

The wind picked up in the darkness outside, fluttering the pages of the novel he'd been reading for the school's summer book report and teasing the tassels on the woven sheets that covered the futons folded into sofas behind him. It was a cold wind. Tidus put his hands on his bare shoulders and rubbed the skin slowly. The radio on the stool beside one of the futons crackled as the signal dropped out every now and again. The storm made the reception worse than it usually was.

"Local meteorologists are warn... proaching stormy weath... gale force winds... heavy monsoonal downp... ll not be a cyclone..."

"Tidus, I know you're home," the islander on the other side of his front door said. "Please answer the door."

Tidus sighed and finally got up. He went into the next room, which was normally used as a study of sorts. Wobbly bookshelves stood against the wall and the desk was piled with Tidus' summer homework, which he had yet to attempt. The windows and louvers were closed but the person at the door could still see him through the flyscreen door. He turned on the light and opened up for them. It was a dark-haired woman, accompanied by another woman who also had dark hair. They both had very similar features, so Tidus wondered if they were sisters. He couldn't hide his disappointed sigh when he saw the person the other woman was trying to support with all of her might.

"I'm sorry," he muttered.

"Don't be," the woman at his door replied. "I'm sure it's as hard on you as it is on everyone else if not harder, right?"

"That's just the thing," Tidus said. "No one else should have to deal with this. I'll take him to bed."

"He's all yours," the other woman panted, heaving the chiselled, muscular mass off her shoulders and almost dumping it on Tidus.

"Thanks. Don't get caught in the storm on your way home, okay?"

"Don't worry about us, we'll be fine," the first woman said, letting her sister lean on her. "You just worry about your dad."

They turned to leave. Tidus gave them a small wave as a goodbye and dragged his father into the house. He could only drag him so far before he had to dump him on the floor; his lean preteen muscles weren't strong enough to carry his father very far. He shut the door and dragged his dad by the wrists into his bedroom. Tidus managed to heave him onto his bed. His father grunted and rolled over in his sleep as soon as he hit the mattress. He had the strong, unpleasant odour of alcohol coming off his breath and his skin. Tidus brushed the dry strands of black hair out of his face and went to get a glass of water and a couple of aspirin. His father would want it in the morning. Then he returned to his place on the mat in his living room and started brooding again. They hadn't told him what had happened this time, not that Tidus wanted to hear it. Every night his dad got blind drunk and embarrassed himself. Sometimes he could refrain from doing so – like the night before a big match – but every other night was as humiliating as the next.

He tried to get the thought of it out of his head. Tidus thought instead of his friends Sora, Kairi and Riku and wondered where they were going to go on that raft of theirs. He turned off the radio and its annoying cackle, left with just the wind howling outside. It sounded like it was going to be a rough storm. What would happen to the raft? It would most probably be smashed to bits by roaring waves or blown out to sea to be lost forever. Kairi would be disappointed if that happened after they'd done all of that hard work. Tidus had to admit it; he liked Kairi... a lot. He would hate to see her upset and while he was disgruntled by the fact that she was choosing to leave the island he knew she'd be happy doing it. He wanted her to be happy, even if it was without him. Sora and Riku were capable of protecting her if worst came to worst, especially Riku. Tidus had to admit defeat this time. And he thought that maybe the least he could do for her right now would be to save her raft from the storm. He got up and grabbed a raincoat, just in case he needed it, and headed out into the windy weather.

The clouds swirled and clumped overhead, dark and ominous in the night sky. The sea still looked calm enough to sail in, though. Every now and again a fork of lightning split the night sky. Tidus hurried towards the beach where the jetty was to get his boat and head towards the little play island. All of a sudden a peculiar quake shook the earth beneath his feet. He looked up to the island's volcano, wondering if it was erupting despite no warnings of seismic activity but it was still smoking lazily. No lava dribbled out of the cone and rocks weren't exploding from the main vent. The ground underneath him suddenly cracked. He stepped over the crack, wondering what on earth was going on. He looked up at the sky. Those foreboding clouds were swirling around one particular spot: the island.

A ball of dark mass appeared above it and a whirlwind started up. Everything was drawn to that dark mass. The island was breaking apart piece by piece and being sucked into the dark ball. The land around Tidus began to break and crack even more. Cyclonic winds tore up man-made structures and sucked them into the darkness. The volcano crumbled away, the trees were torn from the soil, roots and all, houses disintegrated and soon enough the ocean itself was being drained into the dark. The ground was lifted from right underneath Tidus' feet. He screamed as he fell down, down, down into the pitch black abyss.

This new darkness around him wasn't threatening. It was cool, not cold. All the time he had the feeling that there was something on his skin. It was touching him everywhere and when he looked he saw bubbles. There were bubbles all around him, falling from his body as if he was diving into the water. Yet he could still breathe. He spiralled down even further, but he didn't mind. This experience wasn't frightening. Slowly, slowly, he drifted down onto the floor of this huge, empty darkness and lay there, still, calm and relaxed. He closed his eyes.

Something dripped onto his forehead: a green, shimmering droplet that had fallen from somewhere up above. More droplets fell around him, making green ripples in the floor. They fell like a light rain. Each ripple lifted off the floor, broke itself and became a piece of string. The strings all bound together, creating, building an entire town. They made everything from the tallest chimney to the flattest paving stone, to the smallest crack.

That drop fell on Tidus' head again. He groaned and looked up. He was staring at a tap above his head. It was broken and unused but some water inside it was still dripping. Another drop fell on his head and this one irked him. He sat up and looked around for his raincoat. He couldn't find it. Around him were just wooden crates and garbage cans. It was a dead-end alleyway. It stank of rot and decaying food in there, so Tidus forgot about the raincoat and left.

Upon leaving the alleyway he found himself in a narrow, paved street lit with dim lights on the walls and hanging over doors. He followed the street down to the closest bright light he could find and ended up in a square. It was fairly small and the centrepiece was a round fountain made of grey stone. A mermaid sitting in half of a clam shell was carved there with long hair spread out behind her. The little fish she held in her hand was spitting a steady stream of water into the fountain, as did two large dolphins at her side. Blue lights around the base shone into the water, creating that wavering, watery reflection that bounced onto the statues. There were four garden beds in the middle of the square, surrounding the fountain but leaving a gap for pedestrians to walk in and out. On the corners of each of the beds a tall, black lamppost stood, illuminating the square brightly. There were park benches all around the square and around the fountain. The buildings around it were all residential, except for one large establishment that took up all of one side of the square. A large set of stairs led up to double doors of this huge building and between the first flight and the second flight was a mural of a large bell.

Tidus walked right out into this serene place. The sky above him was a dark night sky littered with twinkling stars. It was beautiful but he couldn't help feeling scared and lonely.

"Where am I?" He whispered to himself. "What happened to my islands? Wakka? Selphie?"

No response.

"Riku? Sora? Kairi... Dad?"

There was silence all around him save for the sound of the fountain trickling. There wasn't even a cricket chirping. Then all of a sudden there was a rustle in the garden and something darted between two bushes. Tidus gasped and eyed the bushes, wondering if he could get a better look at whatever it was. It couldn't be seen.

"Hello? Is there someone here?"

A dark shadow jumped out of the bushes wearing clanking armour – a little dark monster with glowing yellow eyes. It leaped for him without hesitation. He screamed and put his hands up to protect himself, squeezing his eyes shut. The next things he heard were loud gunshots. He felt no pain. Nothing had happened. He opened his eyes and glimpsed through his arms to find that the dark monster was gone. He lowered his hands and looked around. There wasn't a trace of it anywhere.

"W-who did that?" he demanded, berating himself for sounding so shaky. "Show yourself!" Scared as he was, he tried to put on a brave front.

"That would be me," said a deep but soft spoken voice. Tidus gasped and turned to a street branching off the square. A tall, ashen-skinned man stepped out into the light. He had long, dark auburn hair and dressed in black pants and boots with a black shirt. He had two belts, one carrying several vials of colourful substance and the other carrying a holster for his red gun, which was currently held up in his left hand. On that arm he had a long, black glove that bypassed his last two fingers. His other arm was hidden behind the black cloak that he wore.

Tidus thought at first that the man was here to help him and sighed with relief. Then the gun was suddenly pointed at him.

"Who are you?" the man asked. "What is your purpose here?"

Tidus froze. He gulped. "I-I-I'm Tidus... f-from the Destiny Islands. Speaking of which, do you know where I am and what happened to them?"

"Kaze!" someone called from the shadows of that street. A young woman burst out into the square. "It's alright, Kaze, you got 'em all. This guy's just a kid, really."

The woman was quite short and had long dark hair tied up in a high ponytail. Her long fringe was brushed over to one side in a vain attempt to keep it out of her face. She wore a lavender vest with a low V-neck, tight leather pants and knee-high leather boots.

"Evening," she said, holding out her hand to shake with Tidus. "I'm Alana."

Tidus tentatively accepted the gesture and found himself jostling with the vigorous handshake. "Hi, Alana. Um... you don't happen to know where this place is, do you?"

"Of course I do! I live here. This is Traverse Town. If you weren't swallowed by the darkness when your world was consumed, this is where you'll end up."

"Consumed? So, what happened to my home? My Islands... how do I get back?" Tidus asked in a panic. Consumed by darkness? Tidus had never heard of such a thing before. What did that mean?

"You don't," Alana replied bluntly. "There's no known way to restore a world that has already been swallowed. You must be pretty shaken, eh? Your world was destroyed and then you wind up in this strange, dark place with monsters everywhere and all of your friends are gone."

"The monsters are everywhere?" Tidus squeaked.

"Er... don't even worry about that," Alana said, slapping Tidus on the shoulder. "We at the Traverse Town Gizmo Shop have Kaze here to protect us. Right, Kaze?"

Kaze put his gun in its holster and grunted.

"That means 'yes'," Alana explained. "Come on, I bet you're still really upset and all. I'll take you to the hostel to meet Madame Ebony. She's wonderful." Tidus bowed his head and tapped the tips of his fingers together. Alana bent down to look into his face, seeing the downcast expression. "What's the matter?"

"All my friends... all of the islanders..." Tidus tried to hold back a sob. "Are they here too? Or are they gone?"

Alana frowned sadly and patted him on the back gently. "There, there, it's best to be hopeful. If they survived they'll definitely be here. Now let's go, looks like someone needs a cup of Madame Ebony's special Seven-Star Soup. It'll cheer you up in no time, even just a little." She put a hand on each of his shoulders and steered him down the street that both she and Kaze had appeared from.

Meanwhile, in a different part of town, Sora was awakening.

* * *

**So, I'll be putting a glossary and some notes down here for future reference.** At this point, I intend to explain some things and provide some non-specific credits to the non-orignal characters.

**Kaze:** A character from Final Fantasy: Unlimited, an anime. He's pretty much as I describe him here but there are a few conceptual changes that I will elaborate on later.

I think you already know who I cast as Tidus' dad and you know where he's from too.


	2. The Second Star to the Right

**The Second Star to the Right**

The hostel was a bland building, not out of place with the 19th Century architecture all around it. There was only a small bronze plate on the door with the words 'Tinkermen's Hostel' to let anyone know what it was. The chrome number '96' above it caught more attention. It was only a little ways down the street from the square and a fiery, yellow light in a flower-shaped lampshade shone down on the door. From inside came the sound of jolly music. Alana took a golden key out of her pocket and turned it in the keyhole. She pushed the door open and ushered Tidus inside. He could hardly contain his amazement.

There was a vast assortment of people in the golden light of the large room they'd just entered, which looked like a restaurant. There were children, old people, young adults, humans, anthropomorphic humans, animals, and even robots. A short but skinny middle-aged woman was bustling around serving dinner, assisted by some very hi-tech robots. Upon setting down the last plates she sighed with relief. Then she noticed the three standing at the door.

"Ah, at last, yer back an' yer all lookin' prim and rosy," the woman said, approaching them with her tray in hand. "An' who's this now?"

"Madame Ebony, meet Tidus," Alana replied. "The newest arrival... well, at least to my knowledge."

"Excuse me," Kaze said abruptly.

"Oh, don' be so formal all the time. Ya live here! I left ya a wee somethin' in yer room in case yer hungry."

"You're too kind," Kaze said, leaving quickly. He ascended a staircase to the right of the bar and wouldn't be heard from again for the rest of the night.

"Now, let's see what we got here," Madame Ebony said, turning her attention to Tidus. She put her hand to her chin as she sized him up. "Yer a wee bit on the skinny side, very young too. I s'pose yer fairly well muscled up for a kid. We could put ya up fer a job in the Gizmo Shop by t'morrow."

"A job?" Tidus exclaimed. "B-but I don't have time to look for a job! I have to go and find my friends."

"Oh, don' be silly. That'll be near impossible in a great big town like this," Madame Ebony said.

"I have to at least try," Tidus protested.

"Tidus," Alana said gently, putting a hand on his shoulder. "It's no use. Madame Ebony is right. I know I felt the same way you did when I first landed here and it took almost being eaten alive by about a hundred monsters to see that."

"But you're the one who said it was best to hope!"

"I know but sometimes it's better to hope instead of act, you know," Alana rubbed the back of her neck. "Look, Tidus, people are always sending things to the Gizmo Shop to be fixed. One of your friends might show up or you might meet someone who knows what happened to them. It's safer to live with us here than to wander around out there."

Tidus looked at the floor. He could see the logic behind Alana's thoughts but he didn't want to sit idly. His friends could be wandering about getting eaten by those monsters.

"Bless me stars!" Madame Ebony gasped. "Yer shakin'! Come an' sit down an' I'll fetch ya a hot bowl 'o soup."

Madame Ebony grabbed Tidus by the shoulders and forced him to sit at a presently unoccupied table before rushing into the kitchen. Alana followed soon after and sat with him. Tidus refused to look at her.

"Don't take it so hard," she said, trying to cheer him up. "Working at the Gizmo Shop isn't a bad job. Foreman Ivory will make sure you're well taken care of in the workshop. And we get lodging at this hostel with food and everything. Of course it gets taken out of our pay but you'll still have money left over so-"

"Stop," Tidus snapped. Alana shut her mouth quickly and wrung her hands in her lap. "Just... don't talk."

Alana waved away some curious people, indicating that it wasn't a good time. Madame Ebony returned eventually with a steaming hot bowl of soup. She handed Tidus the spoon.

"Careful, lad, it's hot," she said quietly before retreating back into the kitchen.

Tidus stirred the contents at his soup and stared at it. He could recognise the broccoli, potatoes and tomatoes, as well as some pieces of meat in there and some spices, but he couldn't put a name to most of the vegetables swirling around in his food. Most of them were green too. Green vegetables were the worst.

"Are you going to eat?" Alana asked.

Tidus stopped stirring his soup and just stared at it. He finally dipped his spoon into it and sipped about half a spoonful, just to taste it. He put the spoon back in the bowl but didn't lift his eyes from it. Alana watched him sadly.

"Is it no good?"

"Seven stars, right?" Tidus whispered. "It's delicious."

Alana smiled.

* * *

Later that night after the music had been stopped and the lights turned off downstairs, Alana brought Tidus up to the top floor. The hall was carpeted with a green rug leading all the way down to a small table with a vase of tulips. There were eight floors in the building, each floor holding twenty rooms, except for the 8th floor, which held only ten rooms.

"We're kinda starting to run out of room," Alana explained, leading him to a door with the number '805' on it and handing him the key. "I hope this place is alright."

"It doesn't matter, I don't plan to stay forever," Tidus replied. "As soon as I figure out how to get back to my islands I'm leaving."

Alana sighed. "Well, until then, just make yourself comfortable, okay?"

"Sure."

"Goodnight, then," Alana said, starting to walk away. "Sweet dreams, Tidus."

Tidus couldn't help smiling at the kind gesture. He unlocked the door and entered the room, flipping the light switch next to the door. It was small and simple. There was a cupboard with clothes already packed into it, a bed on one of the walls adjacent to the door and a wooden desk in front of a window. White, semi-transparent drapes were already hung across the window and were pushed to the side for now. It really wasn't much.

Tidus slowly made his way over to his new desk and sat down on the chair. He gazed at the sky above – dark and starry, yet moonless. There were so many stars but none shone brighter than two high up in the sky. He sighed and went to his cupboard to see if he had any sleepwear. While his back was turned he didn't notice a sparkling golden trail make its way from the general direction of the brightest of the pair.

By the time he was dressed (he'd found a boy's nightgown but they didn't seem to have any pyjama pants) the golden trail was gone. He turned back to his window and stared at those two shining stars. _"Stars are so far away,"_ he thought. _"But some of them seem just a little bit closer. I wonder how far away my friends are. Sora, Kairi and Riku, Wakka and Selphie... I hope at least one of them is closer rather than farther."_

There was a light rap on his door.

"You can come in. I'm dressed," he answered. "And it's unlocked."

Madame Ebony came in quietly. She looked like she was still at work, wearing the black clothing and white apron she'd been wearing before and her ebony hair was still bunched up at the back of her head.

"Feelin' any better?" she asked. "The first night's always the longest."

"I'm fine. Just leave me alone," Tidus retorted. He jumped into bed and pulled the covers up to his neck, facing the wall.

"Don' be like that lad," she said, sitting on the edge of his bed. He scooted away slightly. "It can only get better from here."

"Says you," Tidus muttered darkly.

"Oh, c'mon now, remember what Alana said tae ya: 'it's better tae hope'."

"And do nothing while my friends are running around scared," Tidus added.

"Ya can't say that jus' yet, lad. I'm sure yer friends are findin' the same warmth an' kindness ya found with us. 'Ave ya seen the stars yet?"

"There's no moon out," Tidus grumbled.

"That's 'cause it's already goin' back down on the other side. It's very late, ya know."

"Then why aren't _you_ in bed?"

Madame Ebony sighed. "There's far too much work tae do."

Tidus sniffed but Madame Ebony couldn't see if he was crying or being contemptuous. "You should go to bed if it's so late," Tidus sobbed. Madame Ebony put a kind hand on his shoulder. He jerked away. "Stop that! Stop caring about me! I just wanna go home... I want to find my friends and go home. Oh... but that's impossible, isn't it?"

"Anythin's possible, lad."

"That's not what Alana said. She told me that there's no way to return a world 'consumed by darkness'... whatever that means."

"Like I jus' told ya, anythin's possible. Yer saw that big, bright star in the sky."

"I saw both of them."

"I mean the big, big one: the second star tae the right."

"What's that got to do with anything?"

"They say that if ya gaze upon it every night, an' wish with all yer might, it jus' might come true. One day, it'll be dawn again on yer wee island. An' you'll be there.

"_The second star to the right  
Shines in the night for you  
To tell you that the dreams you plan  
Really can come true  
The second star to the right  
Shines with a light that's rare  
And if it's your home you need  
Its light will lead you there_

"_Twinkle, twinkle little star  
So I'll know where you are  
Gleaming in the skies above  
Lead me to the ones who love me  
And when you bring them my way  
Each time we say 'goodnight'  
We'll thank the little star that shines  
The second to the right."_

Tidus was still. Madame Ebony did the motherly thing and stroked his hair fondly, then kissed him on the top of the head. She left the room discreetly, turning off the light as she went. Tidus blinked when the room was suddenly draped in darkness and wondered how Madame Ebony had managed to lose the accent so suddenly while she was singing.

* * *

**Glossary:**

**Song:** "Second Star to the Right" from Peter Pan. Obviously I've appropriated a few of the lyrics but not many. I do that for all of the songs that I borrow - appropriation.


	3. Tinkering with Gizmos

**Tinkering with Gizmos**

"Tidus! Tidus, wake up!"

Tidus mumbled in his sleep and screwed his eyes shut.

"You must be having a really nice dream or something, eh? C'mon! Wake up!"

"Huh? Selphie?" he murmured, turning over and opening his eyes. Alana stood over his bed giving him a sly smile.

"Who's Selphie?" she asked mischievously. "Were you dreaming about her?"

"Selphie's just a friend," Tidus retorted, turning over and pulling the covers back up to his chin.

"Hey, what are you doing? It's time to get up!" Alana shouted at him. She pulled the sheet right off the bed. Tidus sat up looking annoyed.

"What's the big idea?" he yelled. "It's still dark out!"

"It's always dark out," Alana explained. "Hurry up and get dressed or you'll miss breakfast and we can't have you at work on an empty stomach."

"Work?" Tidus echoed. Oh yes, that's right – he worked at the Gizmo Shop now. He sat up and stretched, finding it weird to be waking up while the stars were still glittering against the dark satin sky. He glared at Alana. "Well? Can I get dressed without you watching me?"

"Oh! Yeah, see you at breakfast," Alana said quickly, darting out of the room.

Tidus swung out of bed and looked at the night sky outside. The second star to the right and its companion still shone brightly in the night sky and the lullaby Madame Ebony sang to him the night before came back to him. He just snorted sceptically and shuffled over to his cupboard to search for something to wear. He came up with a white, button up shirt, a pair of plain brown slacks and a pair of brown shoes. He sighed, wondering why there wasn't anything brighter or just slightly less boring than that. He slipped the outfit on, regardless, and made his way down to breakfast.

Madame Ebony had been up early, it seemed, and was still working with the same gusto she had the night before. She treated Tidus kindly with a bowl of cereal, a side of toast and a fresh glass of orange juice. Tidus finally managed to smile brightly at her. He wasn't one to stay embittered for long, especially when everything that had occurred had never been her fault anyway.

After breakfast Alana joined him on the short walk up to the new workplace. As people finished their breakfast at their own pace a steady stream of workers also made their way towards the large building endowed with the bell.

"Hey, Alana," Tidus said as they walked past the fountain. "You said something about a guy called 'Ivory' last night, didn't you?"

Alana looked up to the sky and scratched the back of her head before shrugging. "I don't know. I can't really remember much of what I said last night. I was all upset about you being upset within five minutes of stepping in there."

"And I thought you knew how I felt," Tidus huffed with a slightly mocking tone. However, Alana took that a little more seriously than Tidus intended her to and looked alarmed.

"Oh! I'm sorry! I didn't want to come across as insincere or anything. I really do know what it's like to lose my friends and stuff and it makes me really sad too..." Alana paused and looked down at the ground. She stopped in front of the first step on the stairway and stared at it. "I know I just have to hope. It's the only thing people like me and you can really do."

Tidus slapped her playfully on the shoulder but a little hard. She nearly fell forward onto the stairs. "Don't get all hung up on that," he laughed. "It'll be alright as long as you can hope – you seem to be really good at that anyway." In a more serious tone he added: "I didn't mean to upset you by saying that."

"Don't worry about it." Alana waved it off and continued up the stairs.

The double doors of the Gizmo Shop were still closed but unlocked to allow people to walk in and out. As they entered the shop Alana explained that light flooding out of open doors would attract shadow monsters like the one he saw yesterday, so they were kept closed. Tidus gaped at what he saw.

The Gizmo Shop wasn't really what he expected. First of all, he didn't expect it to be so bright... he also never expected the floor to be pink. Each person had their own little workspace within the shop and these were arranged on platforms all connected by pulleys, conveyor belts and walkways. There was the constant hissing and creaking of pistons, gears and levers as the automated machines ran like clockwork. Tidus looked up at all of the workers getting busy already, the bright yellows, greens and blues that made the place seem like a playroom more than a workshop and the neon lights that curled in intricate patterns on the ceiling. He was in complete awe.

"Wow... this place is amazing!" he gasped.

"This isn't even half of it," Alana explained. "This part of the shop is just small repairs. There's another section for large repairs and complex mechanics, and then there's construction for orders that come in. And of course there are inventors and the production line. This is a really big complex."

"I can see that. So I have to work here?"

"I don't know, we'll have to see Foreman Ivory first." Alana turned away from him. Tidus was about to ask where she was going when he noticed the huge board next to the door. It was full of slots for little white cards with green writing on them. There were hundreds – maybe up to a thousand of those slots and they all had a name printed underneath them in gold lettering. Alana took a card identical to the others and put it into one empty slot. She came back immediately and began to push Tidus along by the shoulder. "He might still be in his office."

Alana steered him to a little wooden door that was very inconspicuous amongst everything else. When Tidus first glanced at it he thought it might just be a janitor's closet. Alana pushed the door open and inside was a small office with a single bright neon light curling like a mosquito coil on the ceiling. The left wall was covered in filing cabinets and in the middle of the room there was a large man sitting at a small desk stacked with paperwork. There were no extra chairs for visitors to sit in so Tidus and Alana had to stand.

"Foreman Ivory," Alana piped up jovially. The man looked up from the computer he was busy with. "We've got a new worker here. This is Tidus."

"It is 'we have' Alana," Ivory said, standing up to his full height, his head almost touching the ceiling. "Always speak in full; contractions are the mark of laziness."

"Yes sir," Alana replied obediently but she didn't look the least bit sincere about it.

Tidus was speechless. This man was huge! He had very broad shoulders and a broad back with powerful muscles that seemed to ripple with raw power with every movement. He was dark-skinned and had a healthy mop of white hair that lay flat as a result of a helmet being worn there for a while. He was clean shaven and examined Tidus with small, piercing eyes. He was wearing a white singlet and a pair of tattered and paint-splattered green trousers held up with a black leather belt and heavy, brown working boots tightly laced up to the top.

"He is just a boy," the foreman said, stepping out from behind his desk. "Nonetheless, it is a pleasure to have new company every once in a while. I suppose that you have nowhere else to go given the nature of your arrival?"

"H-how'd you know?" Tidus asked.

"_How did_ I know?" Ivory replied. "You must speak in full. Most people in this town arrived in the Tunnels of Darkness. That is the tragedy of this town." He turned to his desk and picked up a white card with green writing on it. "My wife has already spoken to me about you."

"Madame Ebony?" Tidus guessed.

"That is correct. She believes you are a strong boy and you are fit to do work in the workshops. I myself was sceptical since you are still a child but I do have faith in my wife's judgement."

Foreman Ivory handed Tidus the card. Tidus received it with both hands and stared at it. It had a fancy green boarder and the writing was cursive, spelling out his name and all of the official details. He smiled, feeling some small piece of pride well up inside at being able to handle an official business card – like he wasn't _just_ a child.

"You should be able to work with the small repairs faculty," Ivory continued. "Your workshop number is written on the card. Alana, would you show him where it is?"

"You can count on me, sir," Alana answered, turning and skipping out of the small office. Tidus followed, holding on to his card. He ran over to the wall and slotted it into the only empty slot left available. It miraculously had his name written cursively underneath it already. Alana came over and pulled on Tidus' arm.

"C'mon, you gotta get to work now... come to think of it, so do I. I'll show you where you're gonna work." She lifted his card to look at it. "Aw, we don't work near each other. Just so you know, I work here in small repairs too. You're really lucky. You get to work up high."

She dragged him away to a little elevator that was more like a balcony on a set of pulleys. The elevator lifted them high, high up – so high Tidus thought they were going to hit the ceiling. The two of them jumped off when the elevator stopped at a walkway suspended from the ceiling. Tidus' workspace was not the highest there was but it was confined within a corner and surrounded by other workshops where people were busily working. The step that allowed Tidus to walk down to his space had the number '779' written on it; the number on his card.

"Well, here we are," Alana declared. "This is where you'll be working. Do your best, okay? I've gotta get down to workspace twenty-two."

Alana stepped back onto the walkway and left him to go back down to her workspace but Tidus didn't really know where to start. The platform he was standing on had rails but they only came up to his knees, however, it was spacious enough that he wouldn't really have to worry about falling off. The floor was plain slate grey and his working desk was wide and clear with a toolbox for him to use and three devices already placed on it. There was a simple wooden chair for him to sit on and a large cardboard box full of miscellaneous spare parts under the desk. A working lamp that was anchored to the floor and curled high over the desk to light the working space was already turned on. Tidus sat down at the desk and looked at what he had in front of him: A typewriter, a remote controlled car and an old, dirty robot. Directly in front of him was a sheet of paper. He picked it up and read it. It contained all of the information on the broken items before him.

The typewriter had a few stuck keys and needed recalibrating... whatever that meant. The toy car hadn't yet been diagnosed for a real problem, so far all that was known was that no matter how many times the batteries were changed it wouldn't go. The robot was a little bit of a mystery too. It was missing an eye and the radio needed to be replaced but other than that, nobody knew what had caused it to stop working.

Tidus put the paper aside and put the car and robot down on the floor since it looked like the typewriter would be easiest to start with. Problem was: he didn't know how to take it apart. He opened the toolbox and stared at it. There were so many drawers and little compartments; it was a very professional toolbox... and Tidus wasn't all that good with tools. He was more of the sporty type, fixing things and building things was the kind of stuff that more creative people did. He stared at the typewriter, looking around it for a possible starting point. It was screwed together so Tidus assumed he needed a screwdriver, but not a big one. He looked around in his toolbox, pulling out all of the small-headed screwdrivers he could find and tried them in the screws. Only a four millimetre Phillips head screwdriver would fit (the measurement was written on the handle), so Tidus began to unscrew all of the screws that held the typewriter together. Even when he got the chassis off, he still couldn't tell what he was supposed to do.

"Having troubles?"

Tidus looked up to the girl who had spoken to him. She was in a workspace just two metres above him, leaning over her short rails. She was freckle-faced and cheery with her hair done up in red pigtails that were plaited so tightly they stuck out at the sides. She was wearing a blue pinafore and an odd pair of high stockings – one was yellow with green pinstripes, the other was red with black netting over it and a black lace hem.

"You must be the new guy," she continued, smiling at him. "Don't worry, it's always hard to figure this stuff out when you first get here."

"That'd be right," said another girl. Tidus got up from his chair and darted over to his rail, looking down at the workspace just below him. There was another girl down there wearing a yellow tank top with spaghetti straps, Capri jeans and yellow sneakers. She looked up from the mobile phone she'd been taking apart and stared at him with blue eyes, flicking her long, brown hair over her shoulder. "You know when I first got here I didn't even know there were different kinds of sandpaper."

"There are different kinds of sandpaper?" Tidus asked.

"I know!" the girl below him said, wide-eyed as if that was something amazing that she never would have guessed.

"You'll get better at this," the girl above him said. "You've gotten off to a good start as far as I can see; you haven't broken it."

"When I was first asked to fix a typewriter, I broke it before I mended it," the brunette girl added. She looked back down at her work. "That took some time to explain to the foreman. Say, isn't he just the craziest guy? He calls you lazy if you use contractions," she dropped the pitch of her voice to parody herself before returning to her normal speech: "'Oh, I'm sorry for speaking English the way normal people do'. It's gonna drive me totally insane one day, I'll bet on it."

"Um, who are you?" Tidus said despite his better judgment telling him not to continue a conversation this way. Looking up and then down quickly between speakers had already given him a sore neck.

"Oh," the redhead said, clapping her hands together. "I completely forgot! How silly of me. My name is Pippilotta Delicatessa Windowshade Mackrelmint Ephraim's Daughter Longstocking. But if you find that too hard to remember, then just call me Pippi."

"And I'm Miley," said the brunette, making Tidus look down again. "Miley Cyrus. Nice to meet you."

"Er... nice to meet you too – both of you. I'm Tidus, by the way."

"Well then, good morning Tidus," Pippi said as though she might have been trying to compensate for not giving a proper good morning when she first opened her mouth. "And never fear! This place ain't so bad once you get used to it... and better at fixing things."

Tidus turned around. Unbeknownst to him he'd unscrewed a few too many screws and while his back was turned the typewriter had been unable to continue to hold itself together on frictional force and fell apart. He groaned.

* * *

**Ah, gotta love that C19 child labour!** (I know, tasteless joke).

**Glossary:**

**Pippi Longstocking:** From a classic book series called Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren. I loved this character as a child. Her and Madeline were my favourites! Anyway, this isn't actually either Disney or Square Enix owned by the way - even the movie wasn't Disney developed. But Pippi is awesome, so I wanted her in here.

**Miley Cyrus:** Yes, I know, I did it. I put in a character from Hannah Montana. I'll have you know that I'm not exactly proud of this but it's all part of the plan. I shall try where possible to not include the worst of Disney Channel again.


	4. Three Days in the Making

**Three Days in the Making**

It had already been three days. Three days and Tidus still hadn't figured out the typewriter let alone the robot or the toy car. Foreman Ivory, of course, wasn't impressed but aside from making Tidus work for an extra hour longer than everyone else each day until the typewriter was fixed he hadn't really punished him. Although, he did make a point of telling Tidus that if he spoke in full as opposed to using lazy contractions he would probably work better. Tidus did not voice this but he thought that was all a load of rubbish and still didn't know what to do. Every time he tried to fix it he'd either screwed it too tight or too loose so the keys wouldn't work, he'd put the keys the wrong way around, he misaligned the keys and small problems like that. He still couldn't figure out how to fix the slider either. Nonetheless, he was getting better at it but the constant failure up to this point was completely demoralising. Tidus would find himself glaring at the damned black contraption, wishing it would just fix itself.

It had taken three days and Tidus hadn't had the typewriter fixed. Until the slider worked properly and the keys were properly aligned it wasn't complete. But that wasn't the end of Tidus' problems at work. More gizmos had arrived in need of repairing. There was an electric guitar with its amplifier, a cassette player, a small lawnmower and a small bicycle.

At the end of the extra hour of his third day Tidus sighed and slammed the screwdriver down. Everyone had already left – except maybe the foreman but Tidus couldn't really be sure of that. He could have sworn he'd heard Ivory calling up to him and saying that he could come down a while ago. Had he actually been there for more than an hour? He wasn't sure. The windows had curtains drawn across them but Tidus still glared at the unmoving red cloth.

"This is ridiculous!" he shouted at no one in particular. "If I can't figure out a typewriter how does anyone expect me to figure out the rest of this stuff?"

He turned to look at his now cluttered workspace filled with all kinds of broken machines. He sighed heavily and turned on his heel, leaving his workspace as it was and headed down to the ground floor to pick up his card and storm off. Before he walked out the door he turned to look at Ivory's office from a distance. The light was still on and his hulking shadow was still moving around in there. Tidus was fuming at this point, hating even the man's shadow. It was ridiculous and unreasonable to think that a newcomer no matter what age would be able to just suddenly walk in and be able to fix things with a snap even if they never had before. It was a difficult job.

He didn't want to go back to the lodge. He thought he might take a walk tonight but where? Tidus let his eyes roam over the entire building until they suddenly stopped on a red door a few feet from the elevator. He checked that Foreman Ivory wasn't going to be coming out of his office anytime soon and then crept towards the door, not sure if he was even allowed back there. He opened the door as quietly as he could and then shut it behind him.

Tidus looked up at the huge place he'd walked into. It was just as big as the room he worked in but it didn't have many individual workspaces. Rather there were several large machines – all broken – that were surrounded by platforms and robotic arms that were obviously used to fix them. There was a broken down automobile that looked very rickety on those thin wooden wheels, a giant version of the little robot he was assigned to fix, a steam train engine that had been wrecked somehow and so many other macro machines. Tidus assumed that these were the large repairs he'd heard about on the first day. Foreman Ivory's office also jutted into this room with another door the same as the one in the small repairs workshop. Tidus probably hadn't noticed it before because it was always hidden behind that man's huge body. Tidus dashed to the other side of the room and snuck behind another colourful door, not paying attention to the warning notice pinned to the wood that said:

"_The special orders section is closed until further notice due to the risk of having hearts stolen._  
– _the foreman_"

Tidus was slightly disappointed with this room. There were no cool broken machines to look at; just the regular pulleys, conveyor belts and the same large working machines there were in the previous room. Tidus couldn't help wondering what this room was for. He took a walk through the maze of machines, slightly disinterested until he spotted another door. No one was around to tell him not to so he slipped through that one as well.

This next room was just as bright as every other but there were no machines here except for a few bellows that were operated with levers that had bird-shaped handles. There was also a clock but it was broken. Nothing was operational, not even the bellows. There were two doors at each end of the room. Tidus made his way towards the farther door. The bellows were obviously there to lift people onto the little walkways around the edge of the room. Tidus had no idea what this place was for, though.

He'd made it to the other side of the room and gasped when he saw little shadows appear in the floor and rise up to take a physical form. They had the same glowing eyes as the armoured monster he'd seen before but these ones were more like little creatures. He turned to run back to the small repairs workshop but was stopped when right in front of his eyes several dark portals opened and those armoured monsters jumped out of them. He froze in place. His eyes darted back and forth between the two adversaries. The shadow creatures jumped for him first. Tidus ducked under their leap and dashed for the new opening. He flung the door open and dashed outside. Two more dark portals began to open as soon as he stepped out. He ran from them before the shadow monsters could manifest. A little way down the path even more dark portals were opening. Gripped with panic, Tidus rushed into the first building he could open and slammed the door behind him. His heart dropped when right there in the middle of the hall he'd entered four dark portals were opening and dropping off more armoured shadow monsters. Tidus dashed back outside and leaped over the balcony onto the benches below in a frantic attempt to escape. The monsters followed him easily and another much larger group appeared accompanied by more of the little creatures. Tidus' eyes flickered from left to right. Above the fountain he could see a large wooden door. He made a mad dash for the stairs with the large door in mind. He raced up the steps followed closely by the hoards of monsters. He almost thought he was home free but yet another pair appeared when he was halfway down the path. With the large group behind him and the two new monsters in front of him, Tidus could only try the yellow caged door beside him. It was only open a fraction. He ripped it open and slammed it shut, sliding the chain lock into place. He then flew into the red door behind the cage, treating it the same way. The shadows merely slipped through the cage but they stopped at the red door as something clattered against it. Tidus hadn't checked to see what was hanging on the door but it was working to keep the shadow monsters at bay. They slunk away into the shadows from whence they'd come, waiting for another heart to venture away from safety.

Tidus leaned against the door huffing and puffing. He put a hand over his racing heart as if that would help it slow to a normal rhythm just a little bit faster. He swallowed to wet his drying throat and took a deep breath to regulate his shallowed breathing.

"... and so I thought, well, if it helped Nicholas kick Rasputin and his evil powers out of the palace at least once it might keep the shadows away and see! It worked."

Tidus looked up, finally aware of a voice in the building with him. He looked around suddenly noticing that he was in another shop. It was a sewing shop. On the right wall there were balls of wool, spools of threads, zippers of varying lengths, buttons, needles and all other sorts of sewing and knitting essentials organised in little compartments on shelves and hooks. On the left wall there was another shelf but this one was full of books containing patterns and designs for all kinds of projects. Sitting on the counter next to the munny register was a little white bat talking to chestnut Cavalier King Charles spaniel wearing a bright red bow around its neck and looking uninterested in whatever the bat was saying to it... speaking of which, how was the bat talking?

The bat flopped down on the counter looking disappointed. "Well some company you are."

The dog barked at Tidus and the bat looked up, looking surprised as if Tidus slamming a door hadn't been enough to get his attention.

"Wowie! We actually have a customer... as in, a customer actually coming through the door?" the bat exclaimed. "Now that is something. You'd think with all the monsters everyone would be using mail order but I guess some people will keep on doing the traditional thing no matter what the situation. Howdy, customer! Bartok at your service. What can I do for you tonight... or today... or something, I don't know. You can never tell in this place."

Tidus just stared at him. "You're a bat."

"Well, yeah. I mean, I've got the bat ears and the wings and these little claws on my feet – look, my toes are supposed to bend around so that I can hang upside down off of stuff and they still do, I just train myself to make them stretch out so that I can walk and stand on stuff the right way up."

"You're talking," Tidus elaborated, still staring incredulously.

"Huh?" Bartok said, looking a bit confused. Then it was as if a light bulb had gone off in his head. "Oh yeah, I keep forgetting that a lot of people come from worlds that don't have talking animals. I mean, I do too, so I'm actually kinda special but- hey, don't stand there and look like you're about to faint. I don't have rabies and I'm not gonna bite you, honestly."

Tidus blinked and looked at the dog. The spaniel hopped off the counter and ran to the back of the store. Bartok sighed.

"He ain't much of a talker."

Suddenly Bartok's ears perked up as a sound approached. Tidus looked up and looked around. The store was small even though he could have sworn it was much bigger when he was outside it. From the back a young woman with auburn hair wearing a tattered pinafore over a white kirtle appeared carrying a pail of water and a mop. Her long sleeves were pushed up over her elbows and both the pinafore and the kirtle were stained, torn and frayed. They were in such bad condition that Tidus thought the outfit was made of rags. The woman put her pail on the floor and dipped her mop into it roughly, splashing some water over the edge. She looked up at Tidus and tucked the flyaway strands of hair from her loose ponytail behind her ears.

"Hey, didn't you know we closed half an hour ago?" she asked. Her eyes suddenly narrowed and she turned her glare to Bartok.

"Hey! Hey! How can I tell when it's eternally night time?" Bartok defended himself. He flapped his wings and flew under the counter to retrieve a set of keys to lock the door.

"And now you're just going to lock him in here?" the woman said sarcastically.

"I don't wanna send him out there," Bartok replied, dropping the keys on the counter and resuming his previous position. "That'd be really mean."

"I guess..." She looked at Tidus again. "How'd you get here?"

"I..." Tidus began, "I walked... sort of."

The woman looked astonished. "You walked? Through Second District?"

"If that's what that place out there is, then yeah, I did."

"Wow... you're either brave, stupid or really powerful if you got here that way," she said, looking down at the soapy water in her pail. "So, are you an actual customer? Or are you here to seek refuge?"

"I was running from the shadow monsters," Tidus explained, "and this was the first place I walked into where the monsters didn't follow me."

"Yeah, those shadows are really pesky," Bartok said.

"Um... so, who are you guys?" Tidus finally asked. "And why are you running this shop if you don't expect any customers?"

"I've already told you my name! I'm Bartok!"

The woman sighed. "Don't mind him. My name is Anya. And you?"

"I'm Tidus."

"Well, nice to meet you Tidus," Anya said. "I just wish I was in a better state. I suppose you lost your world and need a place to stay... or are you a native here?"

"No, I lost my world and I have a place to stay... I just don't wanna go back there."

Bartok nodded. "I see where you're coming from buddy. There's no way, no how I would wanna be running through Second District twice in one night... or day. And as for why we're running this joint, well, we don't run it. We just have to work here. We didn't even get a choice!"

Tidus gave an understanding smile. "I know what you mean."

"Yeah," Anya sighed, finally lifting the mop out of the water and wringing it with one hand. "You know... one moment I was wandering around St Petersburg with Pooka, the next I was dragged off the street and dumped here."

"Aw, Anya..." Bartok said sadly. He turned to Tidus. "I found her first in an alleyway and I felt real sorry for her. I couldn't leave her like that just lying there... and there were shadows and that little Pooka was nowhere to be found. Say, I wonder what happened to the little fella."

"I was supposed to be getting a job," Anya continued as if Bartok had never interjected. "Well, I got one alright..."

She slapped the mop onto the floor and started to mop. Tidus watched the dismal strokes of the mop, long and slow and Anya's clogs clacked slightly against the wooden floor. Then, out of the blue, the piercing screech of another young woman echoed through the store:

"Anya! I'm cold! Turn on the boiler now!"

She sighed and leaned her mop against the wall, turning and walking through a door beside the shelves of sewing equipment. Tidus hadn't noticed it since it was coloured the same creamy white as the walls.

"Who was that?" Tidus whispered as though he was afraid to be heard by the screeching woman.

"That's just Odile," Bartok grumbled. "And boy-o-boy, is she a meanie. She and her dad are the rotten people who own this shop but they hardly do anything... well, her daddy hardly does anything but Odile does _nothing_. Meanwhile, Anya and I are being forced to do all the busy work under threat of death by magic electric laser. I've actually seen someone get fried by one of them before and trust me, you don't wanna get fried by one of them."

"Make it hotter!" Odile screamed.

"And Anya has to take orders from them as well?" Tidus guessed.

"Yeah. And Odile really keeps her on her toes. Anya's only been here for a year and she's starting to look like she's been slaving away for ten. It ain't showing on her face yet but you've seen her clothes."

Tidus heard a small squeaky growl and looked down. There was a mouse hole in the corner between the counter and the wall and a few mice wearing clothes and caps had scampered out.

"It's too hot!" Odile yelled.

"Don't you just hate that Odile?" said a male mouse wearing a red shirt and an orange jacket.

"Oh, I hear you Jaq," Bartok replied. "I have never had the displeasure of meeting any meaner, nastier girl than Odile."

"You said it, didn't he Gus?" Jaq agreed, turning to a fatter mouse in a green shirt.

"I said it's too hot! Turn it down!" Odile continued to demand from somewhere upstairs.

"Uh-huh," Gus nodded. "Why... why one o' these days I oughta-"

"Oh come off-a it," said a female mouse wearing a yellow dress with an apron and a bow on her tail. "Odile's a big, scary witch-lady and we're just itty-bitty mice."

"They treat her like the ugly stepsisters treated poor Cinderelly," Jaq added.

This time Tidus could hear Anya's footsteps thumping as she stomped back up to the shop. She burst in through the door with fresh soot smeared on her pinafore and picked up the mop again, washing the floor furiously.

"She doesn't sound like a nice person," Tidus piped up, even though speaking right now sounded awkward to him.

"Of course she's not," Anya replied, "Odile and her father, Rothbart, were exiled from their world for their evil deeds. That's why they came here."

"She's such a grouch!" Jaq growled. "Anya can't even make herself a pretty dress."

"Jaq!" Anya scolded, confirming Tidus' thought that she could hear the mice speaking too and that he wasn't crazy.

"You're making a dress?" Tidus asked.

"No... I mean, I was going to try but I gave up," Anya admitted. "I wouldn't have anywhere to wear it anyway."

"Anya can wear it to the party when she gets home," said a female mouse wearing pink – in fact, all the female mice seemed to wear exactly the same outfit but in varying colours.

"There's no party," Anya denied. Tidus looked confused so Anya gave an explanation: "before the storm came and sucked up my world, I was wandering around in the old palace in St Petersburg and I saw a portrait of the royal family. One of the little girls looked almost exactly like me. At the time there was also this rumour going around that the Romanov family wasn't completely dead and some Grand Duchess or whatever in Paris was looking for a lost princess who somehow hadn't died... and since coming here, I had this romantic thought that maybe that lost princess was the girl in picture who looked like me. But it was probably just a coincidence. There's going to be no party when I get home, I'm just going to go up north to Vyborg and get a job at a dock like I was supposed to."

Tidus didn't quite see the whole picture with some of the details missing but he could understand the overlying point of it.

"I think Anya can be the princess," said a female mouse in green.

"And you're gonna meet the duchess," Gus added. "Dressed up all pretty."

"Then she'll know you're the lost princess," Jaq continued.

Bartok shrugged. "You never know, it could be worth a shot in the end. Even if it turns out you're not the girl you'll be in Paris. Think of all the things you could do in Paris!"

Anya just shook her head. Tidus moved out of the way for her as she came by to mop. He sat on the bench next to Bartok to keep off the floor while it was wet.

"Anya," came a low rumble from the second storey. "Haven't you finished mopping the shop yet? You need to finish the orders!"

"And clean the windows!" Odile screeched. "From the outside too! They're filthy!"

"From the outside?" the mice and the bat exclaimed in unison.

"Anya can't clean the windows from the outside! She'll have her heart stolen," Bartok said.

"That's not fair," said that female mouse wearing yellow.

Anya just sighed. "I'm getting there," she answered weakly, far too softly to be heard from upstairs. She finished mopping the floor and picked up the pail. She went back behind the creamy white door, leaving it to swing shut on its own.

"They make her sew the orders as well?" Tidus asked. "But she's already doing all the maid work-"

"Anya, start our dinner!" Odile ordered. "Otherwise it'll get late. Hurry up!"

"She wasn't too good at it when she was first put to it," Bartok told him. "She could stitch things up and sew on patches but she didn't know how to do a professional job. It was really rough for her but she got through it. She can even use the sewing machine and everything... but that contraption broke the other week and we're too scared of the shadows to take it to the Gizmo Shop."

"Hey, I work at the Gizmo Shop. When I go back I can take it there for you," Tidus offered.

"You'd do that?" Bartok asked, almost as if he didn't believe it.

"Sure."

"Man, you don't know how much that means to us."

"It's not a problem... um..." Tidus wasn't sure how to ask this but he really wanted to: "how long did it take Anya to learn how to do a professional job?"

"Only a few days," Bartok replied. "I mean, that is a pretty top notch effort, since she was thrown in the deep end and all, but she put her heart into it and she was determined not to get lasered and she pulled it off."

"Anya when you finish with those windows make sure to clean the bathrooms too," Rothbart called down to her.

"What the heck!" Tidus exclaimed. "She's barely even able to start the first task and they've given her three more to do! How is she supposed to finish all of that in one night?"

"Ha! Tell me about it!" Bartok snorted and started a little song:

"_Anya, Anya, Anya, Anya,  
All you hear is 'Anya',  
From the moment you get up_  
'_Til the shades of night are falling  
There isn't any letup  
I hear them calling, calling:  
Go up and do the attic  
And go down and do the cellar,  
You can do them both together,  
Anya! Anya!"_

Jaq continued the song in a grumble:

"_Every time she'd find a minute  
That's the time that they begin it  
Yelling Anya, Anya, Anya..."_

"Anya! Where's my dinner?" Odile interrupted. "Anya!"

"Ya see?" Jaq said, gesturing to the ceiling:

"_Anya, Anya! Anya, Anya!  
Night and Day it's 'Anya! Anya!  
Heat the boiler, fix the breakfast,  
Wash the dishes, do the mopping'."_

The girl mice added:

"_And the sweeping and the dusting,  
They always keep her hopping."_

Jaq nodded:

"_She goes around in circles 'til she's very, very dizzy  
Still they holler:  
Keep-a-busy, Anya, Anya." _

"That sounds tough," Tidus said putting his elbow on his knee and leaning his head in his palm, suddenly feeling bad about running from the Gizmo Shop the way he did.

"I wish we coulda helped her someways," Gus said.

Tidus nodded. He wished he could help her too. He supposed he could thank her for giving him some new hope: that he would be a good tinkerman somehow. He'd be able to fix things with ease like Pippi and Miley seemed to. If only there was something he could do other than try to fix the sewing machine. He suddenly came to a brilliant realisation.

"Hey, why don't we try to take some of the load off her back?" Tidus suggested. "We'll do the windows for her!"

"That sounds like job for the men!" Jaq squeaked excitedly, puffing his chest out like he was a big, strong mouse.

"And the women can do the orders," suggested the girl mouse in pink.

"Great! Two birds with one stone," Tidus grinned.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa! That sounds like a good idea," Bartok interjected, "but there's still the fact that you've gotta do the outside as well as the inside and there are monsters out there."

"Maybe I can fight them," Tidus said. "I practiced sword fighting with my friends on my island so if I had some kind of weapon I could fight them off while you guys did the windows."

"Only magic weapons hurt 'em," Gus said.

"Yeah, and the only magic weapons in the shop belong to Rothbart," Jaq added.

"Does he have a magical sword?" Tidus asked.

"Oh yeah," Gus answered.

"But he keeps it locked up in a special cupboard," a female mouse in blue reminded them. "We're gonna need the key."

"Don't you have the keys, Bartok?" Tidus turned to the bat.

"I don't have _that_ key," Bartok shook his head. "Rothbart keeps all of his special keys in a special box in his room – I've seen it before. If there's something he doesn't want anyone else to have he locks it up and puts the key away in his special box."

"And let me guess: the special box has a special key too?"

"Yep, Odile looks after that. She wears it around her neck on a chain all day and all night. But we might be able to trick her into taking it off. She's really vain."

Tidus grinned. He knew all about what Bartok was talking about – having female friends didn't count for nothing, so Tidus continued: "So if we give her something that will clash with her accessories she might take the accessories off in favour of ones that compliment. Hey, do you mice think that you could find some jewels and chains to make a new necklace? It doesn't matter if they're fake as long as they end up looking pretty."

"Count on us," the mice all replied in unison, doing a salute before scurrying back into their mouse hole.

"Bartok, are there tools around here that I can use?"

Bartok rubbed his chin. "There are jewellery making tools in the sewing room where all the orders are made."

"That's perfect! Show me where those tools are. I _think _I might be able to make this necklace."

* * *

**Glossary:**

**Song:** "The Work Song" from Cinderella (Disney adaption).

**Anya and Bartok:** from Anastasia. I know it's not a Disney film but it's a good film with a lot of imagination and some great songs.

**Jaq, Gus and the mice:** they're Cinderella's friends in Cinderella (Disney adaption).

**Rothbart and Odile:** the badies from the ballet Swan Lake, again, not Disney or Square Enix but really, really good.


	5. Miss Vanity

**Miss Vanity**

Tidus had never even attempted to make a piece of jewellery before and he couldn't even fix a typewriter, so he had no idea how this idea was really going to work. The mice returned carrying beads, jewels and chains that they'd found around the shop and Bartok brought the necessary tools for the delicate art of jewellery making. Now Tidus had to figure out how to make it all fit together. It was even more irritating when Rothbart or Odile would scream at Anya – they kept it up for a while, making sure that Anya couldn't even get started with the first few jobs she'd been handed.

An hour hadn't even passed and Tidus crimped the chain to the hooks. He sat back and admired what he'd done on the shop counter. Considering that he'd had no instructions, he'd done a hell of a lot better than he'd fared with the typewriter. The new necklace was imperfect. The wire that held the beads together was a little bit bent in some places and wonky in others. In places where the wire was wrapped around itself the coils were uneven. All in all, it was incredibly unprofessional, but the shiny beads and jewels covered the imperfections well enough. The only task now was to see if it would work on Odile.

Tidus handed the necklace to Jaq, who scurried into his mouse hole and climbed the foundations and pipes in the walls. He emerged through a widened crack in Odile's bedroom wall, just behind her vanity. The vanity was next to a window with a long, green curtain that draped all the way to the floor. Jaq climbed the curtain and swung onto the tabletop of the vanity. He looked around the room, wondering where Odile actually was. A short but slim girl was standing on the other side of the room, completely engrossed in her own reflection in a full length mirror in the corner (placed conveniently near her wardrobe). Her dark hair hung loosely down to her shoulder blades. She was trying out various poses and methods of hair flipping in a blue, strapless evening gown that was complete with sequins and a chiffon overskirt. Jaq placed the necklace in the middle of the vanity where Odile would definitely see it and then hid behind a large pot of face powder.

Odile sighed. "I knew it; I look absolutely charming in this dress. I'm so beautiful! Now, let's see if I have any jewellery that will go nicely with my dress."

She turned around, heading straight for her vanity. With all of the make-up she was wearing, it was impossible to tell if that was her real face or not. Jaq crouched to make himself even smaller and grabbed his tail. Odile caught sight of the shiny beads and stared at the tabletop with wide eyes. "I never knew I had this." She picked up Tidus' hand-made necklace, holding up and examining it. "It's wonderfully shiny and I think it may be just the right colour to go with my dress and bring out the radiance of my beautiful face."

Jaq chanced a glance from behind the powder pot. He could see it: the key she wore around her neck. It was an average-sized key, dull black in colour. Odile fastened the clasp of the new necklace around her neck and looked into her vanity, scrutinising her own appearance.

"It's such a lovely necklace and it goes so well with my beautiful dress and my radiant face but I can't have two centrepieces around my neck."

It seemed she hadn't noticed the imperfections behind the shimmer. Jaq held his breath when she reached back to unfasten a clasp. He thought for a moment that she might be unclasping the new necklace but instead, she unclasped the chain with the key and put it down on the table, turning around to admire herself in the full length mirror once again. He sighed with relief and while she was distracted he darted out to grab the key, slid down the curtain and ran across the room, keeping a close eye on Odile but she never looked away from her own reflection. He squeezed through the gap beneath the door and dashed behind a chest of drawers. Bartok stood at the top and looked over the edge.

"Did you get the key?" he whispered.

Jaq waved it above his head.

"Good, now we just gotta wait until Rothbart leaves. He should be going to his study to sort out his bills and paperwork really soon." Bartok ducked behind a vase when he heard the creak of an opening door. The ornate brown door beside the chest of drawers was pushed open with slow deliberation and out stepped a tall, thin old man with a wide, owlish face. He paid no notice to the two hiding creatures and headed down the hall to a door at the end. He entered it and shut it firmly behind him.

"We're in luck!" Bartok hissed, flying out from behind the vase and landing next to the door. "He didn't shut it properly."

Mustering all of the strength he had in his tiny bat body, Bartok widened the opening a little and hopped in, followed by Jaq dragging the key behind him. Once inside the plain room, Bartok took the key and flew up to the dresser where a small but ornate black box was sitting. It was enchanted to prevent theft or breaking but with the right key, Bartok knew the box wouldn't make a fuss. The key slotted in perfectly and unlocked the box with a tiny click. Bartok flicked the lid open and looked inside. There were all sorts of interestingly shaped keys inside, some coloured, some rusty and some dull but he knew which key he was looking for. He found a red key with a lion's face and squarish teeth.

"You got it!" Jaq cheered when Bartok held up the key. "But where you gotta put it?"

They both looked around.

"Hm..." Bartok muttered. "If I was a sword, where would my master hide me?" His eyes fell upon a wide chest of drawers with wide, thin drawers. Each drawer had its own keyhole. "There!"

He flapped over to it. Trying the key in each lock before he finally found it to work on the bottom drawer. It was difficult since he was so small but he managed to open the drawer just enough to slip through. It was dark in the drawer and he couldn't see what he was pulling out. It was heavy, though. He couldn't pull it all the way, so he balanced the tip on the edge of the drawer and pushed it. It fell out with a loud clatter. Bartok and Jaq both sucked in a breath.

"Anya! What was that noise?" Odile screeched.

"We're in trouble!" Bartok exclaimed.

"Quick! Put the key back!" Jaq hissed. "I'll hide the sword."

Jaq began to pull by the hilt with all of his might. Bartok leaned against the drawer with all of his weight, kicking against the air until he finally had it closed. He locked it – being meticulous with detail as he had to be – and flew back to the black box, depositing the red key and relocking the box with the black key. He made a mad rush for the chest of drawers, pushing the tip of the sword into the shadows beneath it just as footsteps were approaching. They hid under the furniture, watching the floor.

Rothbart pulled the door to his room further ajar. He looked around with narrowed eyes. He was sure he usually made sure his door was closed firmly. Nothing seemed out of place. Jaq and Bartok watched with baited breath as he walked across the room to his dresser, checking the lock of his special box. He made his way around the room, checking his locked drawers and his cupboard. Satisfied that nothing was out of the ordinary, he left, closing the door firmly behind him.

Jaq and Bartok both released the breath they'd been holding simultaneously. Jaq began the laborious task of dragging the sword out of its hiding place while Bartok flew out into the open and latched onto the doorknob, trying to turn it even though it was almost as big as he was. He was able to turn it fully by the time Jaq reached the door. Jaq leaned against the boring wood, unintentionally pushing it open. It swung freely. Bartok felt his heart almost stop. He tried to flap back with his toes clasping the doorknob but the door kept swinging. It stopped only centimetres short of banging into the wall. Bartok resisted the temptation to drop to the ground with a thud. Jaq heaved with all of his might to bring the sword to the edge of the stairs. He waved down to the bottom of the stairs where Tidus was waiting. He might have been able to complete the mission himself but he was too big a target and would find it more difficult to hide in a tight situation. He took his boots off and crept up the stairs as silently as possible. He looked at the sword Jaq and Bartok had taken. It was rather ordinary: a straight blade with a straight cross-guard that had a small ring for a pommel. The most interesting things about this sword were that a soft piece of red fabric was knotted through the ring and the blade looked as though it was made of water.

"Well, I guess I can't complain if it doesn't look that cool," Tidus murmured. "It looks magical and that's good enough to defeat the Heartless."

He grabbed the sword by the hilt and jogged back down the stairs. Bartok dropped the box key back into Jaq's hands. The mouse darted off to Odile's bedroom again while Bartok attempted to close Rothbart's bedroom door as quietly as possible. Jaq slipped back under the door and darted across the room unnoticed again since Odile was now too busy matching shoes to her outfit. She hadn't even realised the key had been stolen. Jaq made the climb to the top of her vanity, replaced the key and climbed back down. He ducked into the crack behind the vanity and made his way through the foundations to the front of the store. Bartok left the door only slightly ajar but by looking at it one wouldn't be able to tell. He flew back downstairs, flooded with relief and a sense of accomplishment.

At the front of the shop Tidus was putting his shoes back on with the sword leaning against the counter. Several buckets of soapy water were already prepared with washcloths and sponges nearby. The mice were now filling up balloons with helium that Tidus had conveniently found in the basement. Bartok landed on the counter.

"What's with the balloons?" he asked.

"We're gonna use them to fly up to the windows at the top," Tidus explained. "And check this out!"

Tidus went behind the counter and pulled out something interesting: a spring board. At the moment it was locked in position but when the bar was removed it bounced up with a firm spring. "I bet I can use this out there while I'm fighting. Who knows, there might be flying shadow monster too." He turned to all of the mice. "Are you guys ready?"

"We're ready!" they chorused.

"Alright! Let's clean those windows."


	6. The Price of Gratitude

**The Price of Gratitude**

Tidus opened the front door a crack and peered out into the district. He pushed the door open a little bit – just enough so that the mice could push their buckets and colourful helium balloons through – and unlatched the chain lock on the cage door. He flung it open and gestured for the mice to move quickly.

"Hurry up! We gotta get in position before the shadows show up... and mind the step," he whispered to them.

The mice scurried out; their buckets were nearly floating away with the amount of helium balloons tied to the bucket handles. The only thing keeping them close to the ground were the bags full of marbles and beads acting like sandbags. Tidus dragged his springboard out too, flicking the latch so that it sprung into the open position. He gripped the handle of his watery sword and put his guard up. He had no idea if his juvenile tactics would work against the shadow monsters but he figured he'd probably be better than Selphie or Sora... at least he had some impressive manoeuvres. Selphie and Sora treated their toys like battleaxes. Tidus chuckled at the thought of either of them being in his shoes right now. He blinked and gripped his sword a little tighter. Now wasn't the time to reminisce. The shadow monsters (known better to most as 'Heartless') might arrive at any minute, sensing a large group of hearts straying from safety.

"Alright," Tidus commanded. "Everybody ready? Just stick to the plan and work from the bottom up."

"Right!" the mice chorused, dropping their first sandbags. The buckets rose higher and the mice dunked the sponges and bathroom scrubbing brushes that they had tied to sticks into their buckets and started cleaning. The soap bubbles formed solidly and rose off the windows looking like little spherical rainbows in the lights from the shop. Then when the panes had been cleaned a bungee jumper using a piece of white elastic as their bungee leaped from the floating bucket with a rubber strip to scrape the soap and water away, leaving a clear, crystal surface that didn't compare to the foggy, gritty view it once had. It seemed to be working almost too well. The shop window panes were nearly finished and it would soon be time to drop the second lot of sandbags to ascend to the second floor. The myriad of bubbles still shone in the artificial light, making Tidus stop in awe. He stared at them as if lulled into a dozy trance but snapped back to reality when one of them darkened.

His eyes widened and he focused on the real world in time to see a Soldier Heartless leap for one of the buckets. Tidus dashed forward. He struck at it with his sword, sending it off its course. It crashed to the ground with a heavy clank. As if that was the cue, several more of those Soldiers suddenly appeared from dark portals. They could sense which heart was the strongest and closed in on it: Tidus.

The sword was long enough to parry three attacks at once and that left one more. Tidus jumped forward and slashed down on one foe, long and even. The other four dived for him. He rolled out of the way and let them crash into each other. While they were all stuck together by their helmets, Tidus took the opportunity to try the effectiveness of one of his special moves. He rushed towards them and did a practiced double flip, slicing them with a double, circular cut. They were thrown apart. One had taken significantly more damage and its body was beginning to break. Tidus picked on that one, stabbing it mercilessly in the chest where the heart motif was. Its body dissipated into black smoke. He turned around to the sound of clanking behind him. The four still standing lunged for him. Tidus leaped over the top of them and rolled to safety. One of them turned around quickly and charged. He batted it out of the way easily. The others followed the same mindless tactic, not following any form of coherent teamwork. Tidus could easily beat them away from him with the blade but he could only fight one at a time with one blade. To be honest, he wasn't used to being the one who was ganged up on. He spied one that had landed furthest from the others and chose to focus his efforts on that one for a while. He dashed to it, using his speed to reinforce the power of his strike, felling the Heartless instantly. The three remaining foolishly charged again. Tidus kicked the first two out of the way and delivered a three strike combo to the third that finally finished it.

"Tidus! Help!" a tiny mouse voice cried from above.

Tidus looked up. Three dark portals had opened and out of them flew three Heartless that looked nearly exactly the same as the Soldiers but wearing heavy brown boots, goggles, brown caps with chopper blades on them and wings. The two Soldiers on the ground had already recovered and were running towards him and smaller Shadows were rising out of the pavement. Tidus beat away one of the Soldiers and stabbed in other in the head through the open visor. He slashed downwards. Its dark body broke like the ones before it that had fallen. Ignoring the other Heartless that weren't close enough to be an immediate danger, Tidus rushed to the springboard. He jumped on it hard, pushing as much force as he could into the spring mechanism. He shot up like a bottle rocket and snagged an Air Soldier with the edge of his blade, diverting their attention before they could attack the mice. The Heartless flapped away from him as he descended and landed on the roof. The three new Heartless surrounded him. Tidus backed up, trying to find more steady ground. One of them charged in for an attack. Tidus blocked it, feeling the power behind it. It was a heavy blow; much stronger than the Soldiers. He attempted to counter but it flitted out of the way. From behind one charged at him and knocked him to the roof tiles. It backed away almost immediately as though expecting a reaction. Tidus pushed himself to his feet again. He waited for one of them to charge an attack at him again and this time he ducked. He pointed his sword up and thrust it into the creature's stomach. It flapped hard to get away from the weapon but it was obvious that the damage had been done. It was starting to break up with flecks of darkness peeling off its body in wisps. The others didn't seem affected by this; they continued their cautious method of attack. As one came back for another charge, Tidus parried the blow and quickly redirected his swing to slash at the monster. He strung as many hits together as he possibly could before the Heartless managed to slip away but it was on the verge of destruction too. Behind him the remaining one which he'd turned his back on was flexing its claws, ready for another surprise attack. It didn't expect to have a sandbag dropped on its head. A bucket floating with balloons had flown above it. The mice had now crawled up to the handle and Jaq was among them.

"Everybody jump!" he commanded. He and the mice all leaped off the handle and grabbed onto one side of the bucket. They closed their eyes and held their breath as the soapy water poured over them and over the Heartless. It was hardly affected since it was wearing goggles, but having its attention turned away from Tidus gave the blond enough time and a wide opening to attack and destroy it. The mice let go of the bucket since it was now significantly lighter and was floating away uncontrollably. They landed on Tidus' head and shoulders.

"Are you guys okay?" Tidus asked the sodden rodents.

"We're fine," said a small one in a green shirt.

"What about the others?"

"We gots the windows all finished," Jaq reported, "so we're cutting the strings. Just thought we oughta make sure you're okay, though."

"You're going down?" Tidus exclaimed, remembering the hoards of shadow creatures still on the road in front of the store. He looked over the edge to get an aim for his springboard. "Hold onto me really tight, okay? We're going to go really, really fast."

The two injured Air Soldiers spied their opponent preparing to escape and zipped in for another heavy attack. Tidus saw them both easily and jumped to avoid them. They collided into each other. Tidus held the sword's hilt with both hands and forced his body to turn for a spinning attack. He hit both of the vulnerable Heartless, ultimately defeating them.

They now entered a freefall towards the springboard. Tidus landed on his feet and jumped off it, swinging down on a small Shadow and killing it immediately. He swatted at the one next to it. The Heartless were swarming in with more numbers. Tidus panicked. He was sure he couldn't fight this many creatures. He grabbed the steadily descending buckets by their handles and hurried back to the front door of the shop. The Heartless surged, trying to beat him to it. He pulled the cage doors closed and ripped open the front door. The buckets were thrown in first. Tidus leaped in after them and slammed the door, feeling his heart beating furiously against his ribcage.

Outside, a couple of Heartless, curious about the springboard, opened up a portal and abducted it to their world of darkness.

Inside, the tense atmosphere began to lift as the panting, panicked window-washers caught their breath. As the success of their mission also caught up with him, Tidus broke into a huge grin. He pumped his fist into the air a let out a loud whoop of victory.

"Anya! What was that noise?" Odile screeched, making Tidus cringe.

"We done it!" Gus exclaimed, jumping up and down and embracing a neighbouring mouse tightly. "We helped Anya good!"

"Yeah, but look what else we done," another mouse added, pointing to the floor. Tidus' face fell when he saw the soapy water mess that had been created in the shop in his haste to get the mice back in quickly.

"Anya just cleaned that..." he muttered, feeling guilty for messing up her hard work. He gulped down his apprehension and rolled up his sleeves. "Well, I guess I'll have to fix this myself. You guys won't need my help to do the windows inside, right? There aren't any Heartless in this building."

"You can count on us!" Jaq proclaimed.

"Good on ya, sports," Bartok congratulated while locking the door as a precaution. "And I'll take the inventory while you're doing that."

Tidus didn't miss the implication of that and grabbed the little white bat by the foot. "Nice try, Bartok. You have to go and help them."

The mice pushed their buckets away to start their indoors cleaning. Tidus headed around the counter to the small area behind the shop. In this small space there was bedding, food and water for the spaniel, which was curled up in its basket. It looked up as Tidus passed it heading towards a narrow stairway that he assumed led to the basement where he might be able to find a mop. It would also be an appropriate place to hide the sword until they had enough time to put it back.

It was dark downstairs. Tidus fumbled around until his hand bumped a piece of string hanging from the ceiling. He pulled it and the light came on. There were even more, larger rolls of fabric down here with extra mannequins, busts and tape measures. In the middle of it all was a simple wooden table with a box of chalk, three pairs of scissors, a countless number of thread spools, pins and needles and a contraption covered with a sheet of old linen. Curious about it, Tidus removed the linen and found a machine with a needle attached and a wheel upon which a piece of thread from the spool spun. It was a treadle machine, Tidus realised. He found a long wooden pedal under the table connected to another wheel at the end of the machine by a sturdy but slight piece of rope. Stepping on the pedal and working it made the wheel spin and the needle move up and down. It was accompanied by the unhealthy sounds of the needle point banging into the panel beneath it and scratching the metal. The string threaded through the needle hole uselessly. It was then that Tidus realised he'd seen a machine like this before, maybe just once. Didn't Sora's mother have something like this? This must have been the broken sewing machine that Bartok told him about.

Setting the sword down behind some large rolls of fabric and intending to find a mop, Tidus noticed a fairly large case. It looked like something to put a musical instrument in. Forgetting the mop for a moment, he pulled the case away from the wall and opened it. It was quite heavy and Tidus realised that the case itself was weighty when he opened it and saw that it was empty. There were little compartments lined with velvet for storage and safe keeping. Some of them were shaped like wheels and half cylinders. Suddenly Tidus had an idea. Removing the spool and thread from the sewing machine, he took away the rope and coiled it before unscrewing a large nut and pulling off the wheel at the end of the machine. All the parts fit perfectly into certain compartments. Delighted that he'd figured this out, Tidus worked on pulling apart and putting away the rest of the machine. The mopping was left until later.

* * *

Anya trudged back down the stairs to the shop. She was exhausted already but there was still more that she was expected to do. The orders would probably take all night and she had no idea what she was going to do about the windows. With a tired sigh she decided that she might start with the windows first. Using the same bucket and rag she used for wiping the furniture upstairs, Anya walked past the orders on their busts and mannequins, paying no mind to them already too daunted by her task. She opened the almost invisible doors to the display cases where their products were put on demonstration in the windows. Taking one look she gaped. She rubbed her eyes and looked again but the window was still crystal clean. She shut the door and turned around. All of the dresses, suits, skirts and blouses that had been ordered were somehow miraculously finished.

Unsure of what had happened she walked quickly through the door to the front of the store. The floor was clean and Tidus was heaving a case that looked like it was very heavy towards the door. Bartok was sitting on the counter as he normally was and all of the friendly mice that lived in the walls were standing near their mouse hole. Even more shocking was a sword with a blade of water lying across the counter that Anya was sure must have belonged to Rothbart.

"Anya, you're back," Tidus remarked. "I wasn't sure if I'd get to see you before I went. I'm really supposed to be at the hostel and I bet everyone's worried about me by now."

"Tidus, what happened?" Anya asked. "The windows… and… and the orders and… is that our sewing machine?"

"Tidus is gonna fix it for us," Bartok explained. "He works at that big, ol' Gizmo Shop across the square."

"But everything else...!"

"We did it for you," Tidus replied.

"We did the windows," Jaq said proudly.

"And we did the sewing," the female mice chimed in chorus.

"I just thought that you needed some help around here," Tidus elaborated. "And it would be too dangerous for you to clean the outside of the windows by yourself."

Anya was wide-eyed and too slack-jawed to make a real response. She pointed to the sword on the counter with a questioning but still disbelieving expression.

"Yeah, I used that to keep the shadow monsters away while the mice did the cleaning. But I won't be needing it now so you'll have to get it back to Rothbart somehow without him noticing."

Anya looked off distantly into space for a moment, thinking deeply. She smiled and took the sword off the counter, putting the hilt in Tidus' free hand. Tidus blinked and looked at her questioningly.

"It sounds like it'll be too much trouble returning it," she told him, "so why don't you just keep it? Besides, if he didn't notice you taking it, why should he even assume it's gone? And you will need it to face the monsters out in Second District."

Tidus closed his hand more securely around the hilt. "Why?" he asked softly.

Anya hugged him. It took him by surprise when she threw her arms around his shoulders and he nearly fell backwards but caught himself. "Thank-you!" she said. Tidus thought he heard a small sob. "No one's ever been so kind to me."

She let go and gazed at him with slightly teary eyes. "You take care, okay?" She patted him on the shoulder.

Tidus smiled broadly. "You bet. But you keep holding onto hope too, okay? We're not gonna be here forever."

"I hope so," Anya smiled, opening the door for him.

"I'll get this fixed for you as soon as possible," Tidus promised, lifting the case and starting out the door. "See ya."

The mice farewelled him in unison and Bartok waved. Tidus left the cage around the store's door and started back on his way to the Gizmo shop. He was worried by his own words. There was no known way to restore a world that had been lost to the darkness. He didn't know how he could guarantee that they wouldn't be here forever.

Oh, but he had hope. He steeled his conviction that he would one day see all of his friends again together on their island and walked forward.


	7. From the Sky

**From the Sky**

Tidus kept the sword in one hand as he walked through Second District, aware that the shadow creatures could jump out at any time. It would also be harder to fight with the heavy sewing machine in his possession.

The street was silent. So Tidus wasn't very surprised that he was able to hear what sounded like a pin dropping down in the square just as he was passing the hotel. He looked over the edge. Beneath him was a wooden bench. Something small and metal was lying beside it but Tidus would not have seen it if it wasn't for the little golden light that suddenly appeared from underneath the bench to pick it up. Curiosity piqued, Tidus leaped over the edge of the street down into the square, landing in front of the bench. He bent down to take a look.

Whatever that golden thing was he must have frightened it. It was backed up against the wall. A trail of golden, glowing glitter showed where it had been and in front of it was an incomplete toy. The chassis was a blue penguin split into two pieces on either side of the mechanism that was being worked on. Some of the gears and the winder were still out of place.

Tidus let go of the sewing machine case and crawled under the bench to get a closer look at the golden light. As he got closer, a human figure could be made out amongst the gold and glitter. The little human had wings and when Tidus looked even closer he could make out that it was a girl. She was blonde, wearing a little green dress and green slippers with white pom-poms. She had a pouty look on her face, even when her expression was wide-eyed in surprise. Tidus smiled at her to try to be reassuring.

"Hi there. Don't worry, I won't eat you or anything," he said. The tiny girl began to edge away. "Honestly! I just want to know what you are."

The girl raised an eyebrow. She turned her side to Tidus and jerked her thumb in the direction of her wings as if that was an obvious enough clue. Tidus blinked, realising how stupid he had just been. Yet at the same time he couldn't believe it.

"Wait... a fairy? No way!"

The girl put her hands on her hips and nodded.

"Okay, so let's just say you are a fairy, what are you doing down here? Don't you know there are shadow monsters around?"

The fairy cocked her head in confusion and shook her head. She then picked up a gear, making a point of showing it to him and hovered back to the toy's mechanism. She studied it a bit before deducing that she had the wrong piece and picked up another one, sliding it into place. She put all of the gears back and picked up one half of the chassis. She slipped the winder into place through the hole in that half, made sure everything was connected properly and then lifted the second half of the chassis. She snapped the two pieces together. Tidus blinked.

"Whoa! You fixed it so easily! Does it work?"

The fairy tapped on the winder as though inviting Tidus to try it out. So he picked up the toy and turned the winder as far as it would go. When he let it loose, the penguin began to walk. Tidus marvelled at it.

"It really is fixed! You're awesome! Hey, do you think you could help me out a bit? I've been working at this big building over here; the Gizmo Shop," Tidus jerked his head in the direction of the shop, "and I can't seem to fix anything. Maybe you can give me some pointers."

The fairy gasped and took a step back, holding her hands in front of her mouth. Tidus blinked. "Sorry, I didn't realise you didn't like the Gizmo Shop. Why though?"

The fairy shook her head and pointed behind him. He turned around. A Soldier Heartless stood poised above him ready to strike with its bright red claws. Tidus' heart nearly stopped. He knew there was no way he was going to be able to dodge it at this point in time. Suddenly a stream of gold shot past his shoulder and slammed into the Soldier's face. Tidus saw an opening to pick up his sword and stab it through the Soldier's body. Rising to his feet he swung it around a few times until it was flung from his sword to the wall on the other side of the square. More shadows began to rise. Tidus cursed himself for getting so relaxed. He grabbed the sewing machine case, hoping to protect the gizmo inside and got into his battle stance.

Along with the Shadows, Air Soldiers and the Soldiers three much, much larger Heartless appeared. They had large, round bodies and tiny heads with little tin hats. Their arms were huge and thick with broken cuffs on their wrists. They wore maroon jackets and had short, tiny legs. Tidus gaped at their sheer size. He steeled himself – gripping his sword and the case a little tighter – and lunged forward to strike one on the belly. The attack bounced off harmlessly. The Large Body looked confused and lifted a hand to scratch its chin. The numbers had risen to a swarm and with three new enemies that seemed indestructible Tidus had no idea what do to.

The fairy hovered above, wondering what to do. She flitted back and forth, contemplating fleeing. She knew it would be terrible for her to get involved with such big, scary monsters but she felt bad about leaving the blond boy all alone with them too. Finally, she made up her mind. She flew directly over him and shook a load of fairy dust from her wings and body onto him. Tidus nearly freaked out when what appeared to be sand started to pour all over him. A Shadow leaped for him from behind, out of his notice. The fairy dived in and grabbed as much of Tidus' hair as she could and lifted him into the sky as if he was weightless. Tidus cried out in alarm when all of a sudden he was shooting into the air. The Heartless on the ground could do nothing about it but the Air Soldiers pursued. The fairy girl turned back briefly to check if they were following and tried to put on a little more speed. The buildings were becoming smaller and smaller below them. An Air Soldier caught up to them ahead of the others, preparing for what Tidus knew was a hard-hitting tackle. He pulled his sword arm back and waited for the shadow monster to reach them first. He swung his sword into the creature's head, using momentum from the case to get in two kicks and another sweeping cut from the sword. He ripped his hair out of the fairy's grasp in the process and tipped himself up the other way. Realising that he was in the air, Tidus panicked. Luckily, he was caught before he could fall. The fairy grabbed a shoelace and continued to soar upwards towards the stars. The atmosphere got thinner and it seemed the Heartless couldn't handle a significant drop in pressure. It dropped back, disappearing into its dark portal.

Tidus tried to catch his breath but it was a bit hard with the sparse oxygen. He looked around, wide-eyed with bewilderment at what was really going on around him. "I'm in the air?" he asked himself, staring down at the town far below him. The fairy let go of his lace, feeling that he was ready. "Wow... I'm really flying!"

He righted himself and looked at the case. He knew it was heavy but at the moment it felt like nothing. He tossed it up into the air. It spun a little bit but hovered on its own. "This is so cool!"

He caught the case, still marvelling at the fact that it seemed to weigh nothing. He tried to go higher and did a back flip, making himself dizzy with the simultaneous sensation of flying and spinning. The night sky was completely clear of clouds and Tidus could see Traverse Town below him stretching for miles. One end met the inky sea, the other met green pastures and meadows. Even further in the distance from such a high point of view a fuzzy row of trees could be seen marking the beginnings of a forest. Pillars of warm smoke rose from some of the industries and houses. Tidus grinned. He took off in a random direction. The wind rushed by, streaming all over his body. It felt like the ultimate freedom. The golden fairy followed, leaving a jet stream of fairy dust wherever she went.

Tidus grinned, closing his eyes against the wind. Perhaps he had been enjoying himself too much again; a sudden hard impact followed by a shriek from what sounded like a young girl nearly knocked him out of the sky. Tidus fell back trying to shake the dizziness out of his head but that just made it worse.

"What do you think you're doing flying around so recklessly like that? One of us could have been badly hurt!"

"I'm sorry," Tidus replied, opening his eyes even though his head was still spinning. His vision slowly whirled back into focus and he finally saw what – more like who – he had collided with. It was a young girl with short brown hair kept out of her face by a red ribbon. She was wearing a plain black dress with plain orange shoes and carried with her a large orange bag. A thin black cat had sunk its claws into the material of the bag, clinging for dear life. However, what Tidus found most remarkable was that this girl was sitting on a broom in midair. A red radio hung from the broomstick but was currently turned off.

The girl righted herself with a little difficulty and glared at Tidus critically. "Well, since you seem to mean it, I guess that's alright. But in future if you're going to fly around up here just be a little more careful, okay? Bye now."

It appeared as though the girl was about to leave it at that and fly away but Tidus stopped her with a question: "Hang on! How are you flying? Don't tell me you're…"

"I'm using my broomstick of course," the girl said, pointing to the cleaning appliance she was sitting on. "That's what witches do. We fly on broomsticks."

"W-wait, you're a witch?"

"Of course I am, silly! Couldn't you tell? I ride a broomstick, I wear a black robe and I have a black cat with me; that all means that I'm a witch."

"Really? So you can cast spells and make potions then?" Tidus gulped. "Look, I'm so, so sorry about crashing into you. I wouldn't like to be a frog, though, so please forgive me."

"I already said: it's okay as long as you're more careful next time. Besides, I'm actually no good at doing spells and potions – my only talent is flying."

"That's all? Then how do you do your witch stuff?"

"I'm not sure what you mean by 'witch stuff' but I make the most of what I've got. I'm running a delivery service around here." The little witch patted her bag. "I have lots of mail and packages to be delivering to people so I'd better get a move on."

"Don't the shadows bother you?" Tidus asked.

"Oh, they do, but I can outrun them up here in the sky. You're worried about me aren't you? Because I look so little. But I've always delivered my packages on time without damages or complaints… at least while I've been in Traverse Town."

"Really? And what do you usually deliver?"

"Well, most things. It's got to be something I can carry. Weight isn't too much of a problem because I can use my magic to make them weightless."

Tidus looked down at the fairy-dust laden case in his hand. "That's great then! You see, I work at the Gizmo Shop."

"Oh! Really? I get lots of requests to send stuff to and from there."

"Lucky for me then! See, I have to do a special order that needs to be taken back to the owner… but getting it back means running across Second District again and I don't wanna do that."

"I can help with that, for sure! Here, I'll give you my business card. Give me a call on my telephone when you're finished and I'll deliver it for you. Fees apply, of course."

"Yeah, sure thing," Tidus nodded, taking the little black and white card that the witch held out and reading it aloud. "Ah… 'Kiki's Delivery Service'. Are you Kiki?"

"That's me! And this is my cat Jiji." The black cat was now in a more comfortable position, licking himself. He glanced at Tidus briefly before turning away outright. "That's mean, Jiji!"

Tidus laughed. "Don't worry. I almost knocked him off with that collision. I s'pose he's still mad."

"I guess," Kiki sighed. "Well, I hope to hear from you soon. I'd really better get back to work now. Bye-bye!"

With that last word and a wave Kiki turned her broomstick back on course and continued on her deliveries. Tidus waved back at her. He pocketed the business card and looked down at the case in his hands. "And I should probably get to work too. Hey, fairy! Are you still around?"

The golden fairy darted out in front of him.

"I was just thinking that I should head back to the hostel… but I really need your help. Do you know how to fix a typewriter?"

The fairy sighed but it just sounded like a faint tinkle. She put her hands on her hips and rolled her eyes. Then, suddenly, she grabbed Tidus by the hair and began to pull back in the direction of the Gizmo Shop.

* * *

**Glossary:**

**Kiki and Jiji:** From Kiki's Delivery Service. It's a Hayao Miyazaki movie based on the novel of the same name by Eiko Kadono. Interestingly, there are a few official English dubs for this movie and one of them was done by Disney, so this is fair play.

**Tinkerbell:** You know it's Tinkerbell even though I haven't introduced her by name yet. Originally from Peter Pan - Disney adapted the movie from the play by J. M. Barrie and Tinkerbell is not Disney's original character even though she's one of the corporation's mascots - but now has her own spin-off movies that seem to only make less chronological sense the more the writers try to add it up. If you will excuse me, I will take the liberty of actually picking and choosing which "canon" traits of Tinkerbell's I'll take from the various movies she's in, trying mostly to stay true to the original depiction of her in Peter Pan. To be honest, there are some added traits that the movies gave her that are likeable but most are just painful to watch, annoying and simply wrong! Wrong, wrong, wrong! Tinkerbell is soooooooo not like that! I don't mind them giving her actual friends now but they should pay attention to her original depictions! Sorry, I'll stop now.


	8. Never Never Never

**Never, Never, Never**

Tidus landed in the square before the Gizmo Shop, tripping himself in the process and dropping the sewing machine. It bounced lightly on the ground once and then fell heavily as if that one touch was all that was needed to cancel the flying magic. In a hurry – so as not to be caught by a Heartless – Tidus pushed himself up, grabbed his case and ran up the steps, taking them two at a time. The doors of the shop were now locked but with a little flick of the fairy's wrist they clicked open and even swung open by themselves. Tidus hopped inside and closed them. It was dark inside; the foreman had gone home and was probably with everyone else at the lodge eating dinner or sleeping (Tidus had no idea what time it was). With the fairy as his only light, he ascended to his workstation and turned on the lamp.

"Okay, let's work," Tidus said with determination, pulling the typewriter out so that it was directly in the light.

Under the guidance of the fairy, Tidus tinkered away with the typewriter. The little golden fairy instructed him to take everything apart until every piece was spread out on the desk. Tidus was sure this wasn't the most efficient way but it seemed to be the best way this fairy knew for this machine. She fluttered into his toolbox and tried to pull out a plastic slip.

"Huh?" Tidus said, pulling it out for her. "These are cloths… for polishing, I think."

She dropped back down to the desk with a jingle, tapping one of the pieces and then rubbing at it with her forearm. Tidus gaped in realisation. She was telling him to clean each piece. It was time consuming work. Each piece was filthier than Tidus had thought – the cloths came away stained with grime, oil, dirt and dust, making Tidus wonder what it was this person was doing with the typewriter. Then, as he was putting it back together, he could finally see the second problem: a part of the slider had been severely cracked. He dug around in his box of spare parts, finding two replacements that were both equally suitable to finish the job. He randomly picked one and continued to reconstruct the typing machine.

When it was finished it looked exactly like it did when Tidus first saw it. But just to be sure that it wasn't, he had to do a test run. He rolled a piece of paper into the slider and pushed it to one side, biting his lip.

And he began to type.

The slider took a step with each letter typed, even though no letters were forming due to there being no ink. Every key Tidus tapped worked perfectly. At the end of the row, Tidus tapped the key for a new line and slid the slider back into its original position. It all worked like a charm. Tidus grinned at the fairy. Now that this one had been solved, Tidus decided that it was time to return to the hostel so he flicked off the light and made his way back downstairs. The fairy climbed into his pocket, wanting to go with him.

* * *

The lights on the ground floor of the Tinkerman's Hostel were still on when Tidus arrived, even though nobody was there. He supposed that Madame Ebony must have still been working. Rather than bother her, Tidus crept up the stairs to his own room and once he was there he changed into the nightclothes immediately. The fairy wrestled itself out of his pocket as the clothes made a little pile on the floor.

He didn't feel so tired yet, so Tidus took a seat at his desk and stared up at the stars. The fairy flew over and sat on the windowsill, looking through the glass at the two brightest stars in the sky. As the two of them were watching the sky, one star mysteriously twinkled out of existence. It was as though it had never been there in the first place.

"I was told that people come here when they lose their worlds," Tidus said sadly, making the fairy look up at him. "Did that happen to you too?"

She shook her head. Seeing the boy so sad made her think of someone else who she held so dear. She hovered off the sill, trying to think of something that could cheer him up, when something shiny caught her eye. She darted to the top of the cupboard where she saw it while Tidus paid her no mind. Seeing this forgotten contraption made her grin. After all, this boy seemed to really like it when she fixed things, even though she didn't know why. She sprinkled a little fairy dust on it and piled each piece onto a little tower. Despite the dust she still lifted it with some difficulty and brought it over to the desk. Tidus looked down when he heard the thumping of mechanical parts falling on wood.

"What's this?" Tidus asked, picking up one of the larger pieces: a porcelain ballerina standing en pointe on one leg. "I guess whoever lived in this room before me left it here by mistake. Too bad it's broken…"

Not so much broken as disassembled. Tidus watched the fairy pull every single piece out until they were all spread out in front of her. Just like the penguin toy, she started to put them all back together like a puzzle. She moved back every now and again to examine her progress and determine which pieces needed to go next. Sometimes she got gears in the wrong places. When she was finished she invited Tidus to put the finishing touch on.

There was a round panel with a hole in it on top of the box the fairy had filled. It corresponded directly to the stem beneath the ballerina's toes. Tidus slipped the ballerina into her rightful place and turned the winder around several times. When he let it go, the music box began to play a sweet melody. As the ballerina turned the fairy took hold of one of her porcelain hands and tip-toed on air as though she was guiding the dancer around her own podium. The music made Tidus smile.

"Man, you're really amazing," Tidus said. The fairy blushed and for a split second her golden aura turned pink.

A sudden rap on the window made them both look away. A redheaded boy with freckles and a green cap was knocking, looking in with a grin. Tidus gaped at him and hurriedly unlocked the latch to open the window.

"How did you get up here?" he demanded immediately.

"Well…" said the boy, pausing for a dramatic effect if nothing else, "I flew."

"You flew?" Tidus echoed and reminded himself that he was doing just that maybe an hour ago.

"Yeah, that's right," said the boy, tipping his hat up at the back and taking on a mobster accent: "you got a problem with that?"

He sounded tough but Tidus could tell by the look on his face that he was just playing.

"I was looking for Tinkerbell," the boy said, holding his hand out. The little golden fairy abandoned the music box and stood on his palm. "We have to get back to Neverland soon."

"What? Who are you? And what's 'Neverland'?" Tidus inquired.

"Me? They call me Peter Pan," the redhead said, flying away from the window suddenly and striking a very dignified pose, which only looked very silly in that green elf suit. "And Neverland is the most wonderful place of all the places you could ever think of."

"Why? What's so special about it?" Tidus said, thinking of all of the things that made his island great too.

"In Neverland, when you say never, you can mean it, no matter what it is," Peter Pan answered. At first this didn't make sense to Tidus at all, until Peter continued: "If you say: 'I'm never gonna listen to a grown-up', you never have to. If a boy says: 'I'm never gonna touch a girl and get cooties', he never will. If I say: 'I never wanna grow up', then I won't. Pretty simple."

Tidus chuckled. "Oh, I see. So if I said: 'I never want to lose my friends' I never would."

"Bingo, buddy! In Neverland, if you say never, you mean _never_."

Tidus sighed and rested his head on his forearms. "Problem is, I've already lost my friends. And being stuck here working at this stupid factory has got me feeling like I'm doing nothing." Tidus looked up at Peter Pan and Tinkerbell. "I feel like I've given up."

The boy and the fairy exchanged glances. Finally, Peter said: "Well, cheer up, pal. Just because you're not in Neverland doesn't mean you never get to say never."

"That's not what a friend of mine told me," Tidus said, thinking of Riku. "When I was little he once told me that 'never never happens'…"

"Exactly! Which means that nothing is impossible," Peter deducted, flying into the room and putting an elbow on Tidus' head.

"How did you figure that?" Tidus asked. "Besides, at the moment, it looks very probable. Nothing I can say or think will change this."

Peter put a hand to his chin, thinking about the matter. "Maybe you're just not in the right mindset. When you're not in Neverland you need to think more prognomatily."

"You mean 'pragmatically'," Tidus corrected.

"That's what I said! You gotta find the right never-thing to say. Like, say: 'I'll never give up'. That's a good one, right?"

"It is. But how do I 'never give up' if I can't even begin?"

"First, you've got to never give up starting. Then, you never give up doing. After that, you never give up finishing," Peter explained. "Makes sense to me."

Tidus couldn't stop a smile… and then laughed.

"Y'see? Everything's better already," Peter said to Tinkerbell, giving her a wink. "Uh-oh!"

Tidus tried to stop himself laughing and turned to the window where Peter was looking. Winding up to the Second Star to the Right was a long, golden trail.

"Come on, Tink, we gotta skedaddle if we wanna get back to Neverland at all," Peter said, zooming straight out of the window in the direction of the star.

Tinkerbell stayed behind, looking at Tidus sadly. She flitted back to the ballerina's side and a little golden light glowed on the end of her right index finger. On the ballerina's base, around her toes, Tinkerbell wrote in French cursive: Never Give Up.

"Hurry up, Tinkerbell," Peter Pan called from the sky. "I'm getting older by the minute here! Think of what would happen if I got older by a year!"

Tinkerbell giggled and gave Tidus another glance.

"Yeah, I know," Tidus nodded. "He probably needs you and whatnot. I'm not going to be upset if you leave. But it was nice to have you around. Thanks for all the help."

Tinkerbell gave him a fairy kiss on his cheek that felt like a little drop of morning dew being splashed onto his skin. Then she zipped into the Traverse Town sky after Peter, leaving a long trail of fairy dust in her wake.

* * *

Under the streetlight over the hostel's door, Alana, Pippi and Kaze met up from different directions.

"Did you find him?" Alana asked quickly.

Kaze and Pippi both shook their heads.

"I wonder where he went," Pippi said, "and why. He knows that there are shadow monsters around town."

Alana sucked in a breath. "Okay… let's have one more look-"

Kaze placed a hand on her shoulder. Alana looked up at him as he shook his head at her. "It's already very late and you will put yourself in danger. If he has not returned already, then he's lost."

"No!" Alana sobbed, covering her face. "He can't be… he'll come back, surely."

Pippi swallowed thickly and placed both of her hands on Alana's shoulders gently. "Don't worry. He's a pretty determined guy – at least that's the impression I got. I'm sure he'll pull through and make it back."

"I hope so."

Kaze stepped up to the door and opened it for the two girls. They trudged inside and dragged their feet up to their own rooms. Kaze shut the door and locked it, then went around the lobby making sure all of the lights were put out and the building was secure. There was just one more thing he had to check…

He made his way up the stairs purposefully until he reached the top floor and stood in front of a particular room. The door was unlocked. He opened it just a crack and immediately the sound a music box winding down could be heard. From his position he saw a sheet pulled over a small body and the back of a head of short blond hair and a tanned neck. He shut the door quietly, feeling that everything was as it should be.

Somewhere in a Deep Jungle, Sora was also searching for lost friends.

* * *

**Glossary: **

**Peter Pan:** I'm not going to explain this. Do I have to explain this? He's from Peter Pan and Wendy, a play by J.M. Barrie. Actually, that's not entirely accurate. Peter Pan has numerous representations in J.M. Barrie's works (in his first appearance ever he was a 7 day old baby that could fly because he, "like all babies", was part bird). However, the most famous representation is this play, which Disney based their movie on.


	9. Gathering Armaments

**Gathering Armaments**

Days passed in the Gizmo Shop. Objects came and went, people came and sometimes, due to their own carelessness, were lost to Heartless. Tidus spent all of his time in the shop finding problems and fixing them but weekends were the real problem because there was nothing to do. Going outside was dangerous and staying inside was boring. Some few who considered themselves powerful would go out every weekend. Tidus just kicked his sword under his bed, fearing that if he took it outside he may be discovered by either Rothbart or Odile and then Anya and Bartok would be in deep trouble. Most days were just whiled away in the lobby of the hostel, although if Tidus were to be honest he couldn't say that he didn't mind. Alana usually stayed behind, as well as Pippi and Miley. Nice girls, all of them, but Tidus didn't really want the company of girls and the only man he knew was never around unless his presence was absolutely necessary. There didn't seem to be anybody his age either. Most people who were classified as 'male' were over twenty or a robot so it was a lucky break when Tidus finally met Jim Hawkins.

Jim wasn't a new arrival by any means but Tidus had never seen him around because he worked in the kitchens and behind-the-scenes with Madame Ebony, a decision he apparently made for himself. He was tall – only slightly older – and was growing a rat tail on the nape of his neck. The problem with Jim, though, was his intense apathy that made Tidus wonder at first if it was worth getting to know him at all. However, the older boy did turn out to be a dedicated friend.

On this particular weekend occupants of the lobby were scarce. Alana and Miley had gone to some place called 'First District' with a very tall dark-skinned rabbit-eared girl with silver hair and a name that sounded completely unpronounceable to Tidus' ears. Then there were those (like Pippi) who were sometimes required to do weekend work as part of Foreman Ivory's 'disciplinary procedures' for dangerous or inappropriate behaviour in the shop (it was a mix of four hours of instructional tutorials crossed with elocution lessons). Jim was busy cleaning tables so that they were ready for lunch; even though very few people were actually going to be around for lunchtime, so Tidus had nothing better to do than bring his work home with him. He'd made one of the tables in the lobby his workstation and put down a large cutting board as a table protector. On the floor at his feet was a small toolbox that he'd found in a hallway cupboard on one of the floors.

"Aw, Tidus," Jim moaned jokingly as he passed Tidus' table, "do you have to mess with that thing here?"

"What's the matter with it?" Tidus replied.

Jim put down a tray of large containers of sauces and spices on a chair by a neighbouring table before he wiped the tabletop down. "Just make sure you don't get any oil or grease on the wood; it's hard to clean off. And the heavy tools leave marks. You haven't left any marks, have you?"

Tidus looked around his work. "Nope. None."

The machine Tidus had brought back was the robot that had appeared on the first day at the Gizmo Shop. Up until now, he still couldn't figure out how to fix it. He'd found a new eye for it and a new radio but was too afraid to install the new radio because of what he'd seen inside the robot. He couldn't bring himself to disassemble it for fear that he wouldn't be able to put it back together again. This robot (and the toy car) was more complicated than the other gizmos he'd had to repair. This was a _real_ machine.

"Are you having trouble with that?" Jim asked as he refilled a salt shaker.

"Sort of," Tidus said, even though the answer certainly wasn't 'sort of'.

"Let me have a look." In a rare display, Jim set aside his own work to sit next to Tidus and see what the other was doing. "Why do you look so surprised?" he asked, seeing Tidus' face.

"Uh…" Tidus stammered, surprised that he was actually caught out. "Usually you don't care."

"Yeah, well, watching you nut it out was just sad, so I was feeling sorry for you," Jim said light-heartedly.

"Hey!" Tidus retorted, playfully punching Jim in the arm.

Jim laughed and looked at the robot. Using the tools he could find in the toolbox, he opened up the robot and replaced the old radio. Tidus watched with amazement as Jim pulled wires, used extensions and plug-ins to allow the old system to adapt to the new one and then screwed it all together. He didn't need to take the robot apart, he seemed to have figured out how it worked by looking at it from one open side. Even with the radio replaced, the robot still wasn't working, though.

"That was awesome," Tidus gasped. "I think we should trade: you work in the Gizmo Shop and I'll help Madame Ebony clean tables."

"Trust me," Jim laughed, "You wouldn't last a day in Madame's kitchen. It's chaos in there, especially during the peak hours."

"Then why do you work in there?"

"I just thought that she could use a little help is all," Jim replied, looking the robot up and down after replacing the panel that had been removed. "As for this guy, all he needs is a little spark."

"Spark?"

"His battery needs recharging. I think it's usually done with a solar panel," Jim explained, pointing to the part where they both knew a solar panel was folded up inside the robot, "but as you can see, there's no sun around here. Just stick him under a really hot light and he'll be operational in no time."

"You really know your stuff," Tidus said in admiration.

"Yeah, thanks," Jim muttered, looking at the floor and rubbing the back of his neck. "Anyway, I should get back to work. I hope your robot turns out okay."

Jim returned to his job without another word, leaving Tidus alone again. He unfolded the robot's solar panel manually and decided to place it on top of the piano, close to the light of the standing lamp beside it. With nothing else to do, Tidus lifted the lid of the piano, gazing in awe at the black and white keys. He sat down on the piano stool and experimentally pressed one key down. The note rang out beautifully.

"Do you play?"

Tidus turned around in surprise, accidentally bashing a few keys with his elbow and causing a horrible sound to spring from the instrument. Across the room, Jim almost dropped his tray. The boy who'd approached him from behind all of a sudden looked like a typical teenager. Tidus had never seen him around before. He wore ordinary jeans and a yellow and black jacket with matching shoes. His most startling features, though, were his crimson eyes and his shocking white hair despite his youth.

"Er, no, I don't," Tidus said, moving his elbow away in a panic and looking up and down the keys, wondering if there was a way he could make it quieten faster. The boy chuckled.

"Yeah, it looks like that was the first time you'd even touched a piano."

Tidus blushed.

"You can call me Soul, by the way," the boy continued. "I'm new here. I'm told I start work on Monday in someplace called 'The Gizmo Shop'."

"Oh, you were roped into it too?" Tidus replied. "I should have known. Working there is a requirement if you want to live here."

"Then that means you're one of these 'tinkermen' too," Soul said, sitting down on the stool next to Tidus. Tidus moved over so that there was more room. "What's that like?"

"Hell if you don't know anything about fixing things."

"Not cool. The only thing I know how to do that even remotely qualifies is tune an instrument."

"Really? Does that mean you play one?"

"Yeah… the piano, actually." He turned to fully face the keys and placed his fingers gently on the whites. "You don't mind if I play, do you?"

"Go ahead," Tidus said. He watched intently. When Soul began to play his fingers seemed to be dancing. He keyed out a simple chord progression with a blues rhythm. He was working in a major key but somehow his improvised melody seemed to be quite sad. Tidus still found himself bopping his head to the music. Looking around the lobby he could see its effect on the few other occupants: Jim, an alien reading a book and group of four rabbits playing a board game. Their features drooped and their postures slouched but they were tapping and nodding with the beat.

"That's so cool," Tidus murmured.

"You think so?" Soul asked, though his playing didn't let up.

"Definitely. None of my friends can play instruments… or sing for that matter," Tidus told him, thinking of all the times when they'd tried. The sadness Tidus always felt when thinking about them was exacerbated by the music. "I wish I knew where they were."

"You lost your friends too, huh? Bummer."

"You too?"

"Yep… do you think they could be somewhere nearby?"

"You never know," Tidus replied. "They could. People end up here when their worlds are swallowed by darkness. If your friends survived then they'll be here in this town. At least that's what I'm told. But then there's the shadow monsters."

"Shadow monsters?" Soul enquired. His playing stopped abruptly.

"Yeah, they're skulking around out there trying to steal people's hearts. If one of your friends got on the bad end of one of them it could be the end of them for good."

Soul looked down at his fingers, hovering gently over the keys.

"Are you worried?" Tidus asked.

Soul laughed. "About my friends? Nah, worrying is uncool and my friends are stronger than your average Joe. I'm sure they'll survive with the shadow monsters… but it doesn't hurt to think about them." Tidus smiled. He could tell that Soul actually was worried.

It seemed like Soul was going to start playing the piano again but then all of a sudden the peace was interrupted by a young girl bursting through the door. Her shiny, raven hair was tied in pigtails and she was wearing a shiny designer dress with a well-matched cardigan and very stylish leather purse. A pair of sparkly high-heeled platform sandals was clutched in one hand. She turned and shut the door quickly behind her, causing it to slam. Nobody winced at the sound – slamming doors was very common in this town.

"Oh my god!" the girl huffed, putting a hand to her chest. "You guys totally have to help me!"

"What happened?" Tidus asked, standing up.

"Okay, well, I was like, running around in the streets, which is like, so not my thing, okay? Unless it involves shopping. I only run if I get to shop too. But anyway, I was like, running 'cause there were all these shadow monsters and I need a glass of water and a bath 'cause I'm like, sweating, which is so gross and my feet got all dirty and sweaty, which is like, double-gross."

"Is that all?" Tidus sighed, thinking that there had been some actual trouble. "Yeah, you can use our bathroom."

"Thanks so much!" the girl exclaimed. "You are such a nice person."

"Don't mention it, it's nothing," Tidus replied, walking up to her and putting a hand out to shake. "I'm Tidus."

"Aw, well, my name's London Tipton and I know you're sweet and all, but you're dirty so I don't want to touch you."

Tidus was taken aback by that. He took his hand back and looked at it. His palm was covered in grease and a little bit of oil but it was no worse than the hands of any of the other tinkermen. He glared at the girl as she sat down to examine the state of the soles of her feet. She looked up just as Jim placed a coaster and a glass of water on the table next to her.

"Hi there, handsome," she cooed, feigning coyness. Jim looked away with a nervous cough. "How come this place has a waiter service? Is this like, some new restaurant?"

"This is the Tinkerman's Hostel," Jim explained. "It's the lodging for all of the workers at the Gizmo Shop."

"Hostel? Oh my god! I like, totally forgot!" London exclaimed, covering her mouth. Her eyes widened theatrically.

"What?" said Soul, putting his hands in his pockets and coming over to London's table.

"The hotel in Second District! Mr Mosby and the twins are in so much trouble!"

"Mr Mosby and the twins?" Tidus and Soul said simultaneously, exchanging glances.

"Yeah! I mean, there was always lots of shadow monsters around and it's like, really bad for business but now it's just way outta hand. If we don't hurry over there they could like, die!"

For a moment, Tidus thought of the possibility of stepping up to the plate and taking on the job. He stopped himself when he remembered what had happened the last time he'd taken on a swarm of Heartless in Second District. If not for Tinkerbell, he would have been gone. "We should tell Kaze."

"Kaze?" Soul repeated.

"Geez, I'm not sure," Jim said, putting his hands on his hips. "If Second District is really getting as bad as London says it is, then it must just about be a swarm of shadows out there. Kaze's our best line of security here at the Gizmo Shop. If it weren't for him many tinkermen here might not still have their lives and Kaze could very well lose his own life if we send him out into something like that."

"Then we won't send him in alone," Tidus said, clenching his fists. He turned to the rest of the lobby. "Who here reckons they can fight a shadow monster?"

The alien looked over his book briefly before hiding behind the pages again. The rabbits dropped their ears flat against their heads and pretended not to hear Tidus.

"Okay, then I'll go with Kaze," Tidus decided.

"Even with you it's two against an army," Jim argued.

"I'll come too," Soul offered.

"Don't you guys get it? I mean, can you even use weapons? Do you even _have_ weapons?"

Soul grinned, showing off his pearly white and razor-sharp teeth. He put his right hand out and in a bright flash it became a slightly curved blade from the elbow down. "I _am_ a weapon."

Tidus smiled. "Okay, then it's Kaze, Soul and me. Just wait here, I'll get Kaze." Tidus ran up the stairs to the first floor, knocking on room number two. "Kaze! Kaze we need your help!"

There was silence behind the door for a whole sixty seconds and then finally the door opened silently… too silently. "What's the matter?"

"There's heaps of shadow monsters in Second District!"

"Heartless."

"Huh? What?"

"The shadow monsters are called Heartless," Kaze reiterated. "This doesn't have anything to do with the Gizmo Shop. I'm employed by the foreman for security; destroying Heartless is not my hobby."

Tidus bit his lip. "Well… um… it does involve the Gizmo Shop now because me and the new tinkerman who joined up this week are going out to help clear them out. You can help as a fellow employee, right?"

"No," Kaze snapped. "Whatever foolish endeavours you take in your spare time are none of my concern, tinkerman or not. If you lose your heart or your life it will be by your own error of judgment."

Kaze closed the door quietly. Tidus rapped on it again, calling out to Kaze in hopes that he would answer but he didn't. Tidus huffed and continued upwards to his room to find his own sword. On the way back down he kicked Kaze's door in spite.

In the lobby, London had had to make do with a napkin and some water to clean her feet since Jim insisted on going back to work rather than running her a bath. Soul also flatly refused to be her servant. When Tidus returned alone with sword in hand, he raised an eyebrow.

"Weren't you going to get that other guy?"

"We don't need that loser," Tidus growled. "London, you can stay here where it's safe. I know where the hotel in Second District is. Soul and I will help out your friends."

"Aw, that's so nice of you. Why can't your friend be like you?" London asked, purposely taking a dig at Soul. Soul just rolled his eyes.

Tidus clapped Soul on the shoulder. "Okay, dude, it's just you and me. Let's go."

Soul nodded and the two of them left the Tinkerman's Hostel together, ready to brave the shadows of Second District.

* * *

**Glossary:**

**Jim Hawkins:** character from Treasure Planet, a Disney feature film which is basically a sci-fi version of Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson and one of the most imaginative things they've ever come up with. Seriously, great animated film.

**Soul Eater Evans:** yes, that's his full name. He's a character from the manga Soul Eater by Atsushi Okubo. Square Enix developed a game called Soul Eater: Monotone Princess based on the series for the Wii. I haven't actually played the game and looking at the plot I'm not really sure I want to (not to mention that it's on the Wii and action-adventure game + Wii normally = fail) but that's the link.

**London Tipton:** from The Suite Life of Zack and Cody. I know I promised earlier that I wouldn't scrape from the bottom of the barrel again but in my defense I will argue that I don't actually think this is the _very_ bottom of the barrel. Sure this show is down there with the rest of the Disney Channel swill but it does for the Disney Channel what Lonely Island does for musical slapstick. The Suite Life of Zack and Cody has its moments and its episodes - its a children's version of sitcom (what could possibly go wrong?).


	10. Mosby and The Twins

**Mosby and the Twins**

Tidus led Soul to Second District through the Gizmo Shop. Jim was right; even inside the special orders section that the Heartless had already penetrated there was almost a small battalion of the creatures popping up.

"Worry about these ones later," Soul advised. "Our priority is getting to the hotel and saving those people."

Tidus nodded and instead of eradicating, cut his way to the nearest exit. He made it out onto the balcony and jumped down onto the cobblestones. Three Large Bodies appeared and surrounded him along with four Soldiers and six Shadows. Tidus froze up and stared around him, wide-eyed. The Soldiers made the first move with a wild lunge at Tidus. Tidus held up his sword defensively.

"Duck!"

Tidus didn't have time to do that as Soul jumped down from the balcony and landed on his shoulders. Unprepared, Tidus dropped to the ground. Soul swung his blade arm around, cutting through the four Soldiers easily. They dissipated into black smoke. Tidus gaped.

"Whoa! You destroyed them in one hit! How?"

"It takes practise," was all Soul supplied before he leaped off Tidus' back and charged towards a Large Body. Two Shadows crept up behind him. Tidus lifted himself off the ground held his sword in both hands. He swept his sword through both Shadows and delivered a downward slash towards one of them. It staggered so Tidus took the opportunity to stab it through the head. Its body disintegrated. Meanwhile, Soul tried to stab the Large Body he aimed for mercilessly. His attack seemed to penetrate the large, round tummy but it bounced back.

"What the hell?"

"Those ones are indestructible," Tidus told him, slicing through the other Shadow and turning around to bat away the three others that had jumped up behind him.

"That's impossible," Soul growled, stabbing at the Shadow that had popped out of the ground between his feet and destroying it instantly. "Everyone has their weaknesses and monsters are no exception."

Tidus slashed and stabbed a Shadow, putting it down for good. The other two both received the same treatment. Two of the Large Bodies slapped their bellies and began to charge. Tidus and Soul barrel-rolled out of the way and let them crash into each other. They collided with such force that they tossed each other into the air before they landed on their backs. They wriggled and rolled around for a while, unable to get up but they eventually pushed themselves onto their feet.

"I think I've got it," Soul declared, running up to one and scaling its front. It tried to grab him but its big, heavy arms were too slow. Soul delivered a blow to its face that seemed to affect it and then stabbed it between the shoulder blades and tore his blade down the Heartless' back. With a large puff of smoke, the Large Body was gone. "Hah! I thought so. They won't stand an assault on their backs."

With only two Large Bodies left on the field, the odds seemed back in their favour. But then pools of darkness suddenly opened up all around the square. Scores of Shadows were fighting each other to get out and into the town. Several more soldiers appeared and a few Air Soldiers popped into the sky as well. Tidus gulped.

"No way! I can't take on this many!" he moaned, watching the horde appear.

Soul just shrugged. "These guys are weak to me. I can take care of them. In the meantime, you go into the hotel and look for 'Mr Mosby and the twins'… whoever they are."

Tidus nodded. He turned and climbed over a bench and the wall at the edge of square, batting away some of the smaller Heartless. He threw open the doors of the hotel and stepped inside. The hallway seemed completely empty. At first guess, Tidus would have thought that nobody was there. Suddenly four Soldiers appeared in the middle of the hall. Tidus clutched his sword and charged forward to take them on. They charged in to meet him head on. Tidus had just about seen all of their tricks by now and could effectively dodge or block most of them but was still caught out by a spinning kick that threw him into a wall and left him winded. Two of the Soldiers lunged for him. He stabbed one in the stomach and threw it into its partner. He staggered to his feet as the Heartless all charged in again. He ducked and let them crash into each other. This was the opportunity he needed to get in a few cheap shots before they could recover. He hacked, stabbed and sliced them all up until all four had disappeared.

Tidus gripped the hilt of his sword as tightly as he could, looking around for more adversaries. When none showed up, he relaxed a little bit and wondered where in the hotel he was supposed to start looking. As far as he could tell the place was closed. The reception booth, laden with tourism pamphlets and leaflets, was covered with a curtain. Just as Tidus was thinking that he should start checking the rooms, the curtain moved. He blinked, wondering if it was a trick of his imagination. Then, something more peculiar: he heard a small voice.

"He-hello? Is there someone ou—mmph!"

It sounded like it was coming from the booth. Tidus pushed the curtain back and poked his head into the office behind it. The first scan turned up empty but Tidus knew the voice had come from in here. He crawled over the desk and step foot in the office. There was a gasp. Tidus crouched down to look under the desk and there he found who he thought he must have been looking for: a bald, very dark-skinned man wearing a neat suit and two identical blond boys wearing the same outfit consisting of trousers, a polo shirt and a jacket wrapped around the waist. The black man and one of the blond boys each had a hand clamped over the mouth of the boy between them.

"Mr Mosby and the twins, right?" Tidus asked, pointing at each one.

The boy in the middle grabbed Mr Mosby and his brother's wrists and wrenched their hands away from his mouth. "How'd you know it was us?"

"It was London, wasn't it?" Mr Mosby guessed, looking at Tidus with an expression that seemed to be pleading. "Please tell that it was London and that she's safe. I-I tried to tell her not to go but she was determined to get help."

"Don't worry, London's at the Tinkerman's Hostel," Tidus replied. "She isn't in danger but she was worried about you guys. What's the safest way out of here?"

"There is no safe way out," Mr Mosby moaned. "The shadow creatures are all through the hotel, in the square, in the alleyway-"

"Wait, there's an alleyway?"

"Yes, but it's also full of shadow monsters."

"Where does the alleyway go?" Tidus asked.

"Nowhere, really," answered the boy in the middle. "It's basically just a drain unless you tear down that wall at one end. Don't know where it goes, though."

"Other than that, there's a door that leads straight back into Second District," Mr Mosby added.

"And we can't really go out there," Tidus mused. "There's practically an army of shadow monsters out there."

"Then maybe we should just stay here and give up," said the boy in the middle.

"What? How can you say that?" exclaimed his twin.

"Well, even if we're safe, where do we go from here? The hotel is all we've got in this town and if we abandon it we're gonna be homeless."

"But if we stay here we're gonna die! Hey, Blondie, do you know any way out of this?"

"Look who's talking," Tidus retorted at the blond remark. "But maybe you'll be safe if I can fight a path through Second District and get you to the Tinkerman's Hostel."

"What about First District?" Mr Mosby asked. "I heard a rumour that First District was secure. The Heartless never go there for some reason."

"I don't know where First District is," Tidus admitted.

"Well, what if we do try to break down that wall?" said the twin on the side. "If we break down that wall and it gets us into First District we'll be safe."

"That's crazy!" the middle twin argued. "And what if it doesn't?"

"Then the shadow creatures come in here and we die. You know, as dumb as London is most of the time – no, wait, scratch that – as dumb as London is _all_ of the time, she was right. We should try to do something even if it leads us nowhere. Otherwise we'll just look like a bunch of pathetic idiots who didn't even have hope."

Tidus smiled and nodded. "You're right. You should try. We'll go into the alleyway and see if we can break down the wall and if that doesn't work, Plan B says I fight us through Second District and get you to the hostel where London is."

"Both of those ideas are completely mad!" Mr Mosby protested. "Even if you're a seasoned warrior from... from… whatever world you're from, we're not fighters! I'm just a hotel manager and these two are just troublemaking boys."

"Hey!" the middle twin said with a frown.

"Even if we're not trained to fight, we do have the lasers," said the other twin.

Tidus titled his head to the side. "Lasers?"

"Yeah, London got it in her head to buy these space lasers just in case of trouble. I mean, we wouldn't be able to use them to fight off a whole army of shadow monsters by ourselves but we might be able to be like, I don't know, your cover fire. At least then we wouldn't be completely useless and we'd look really cool."

"Seriously!" Tidus exclaimed, a bit more excited than he really should have been. "Let's see 'em then!"

The twin on the side got up and dashed over to a filing cabinet in the corner of the room and opened the bottom drawer. All of the filing slots had been taken out to make room for a brown cardboard box that the blond boy removed and brought back to the small group. He tore the box open (it was firmly shut with brown tape). It was packed tight with old, yellow straw that the twin carelessly threw out of the box to reveal shiny, untouched laser guns with their batteries included. Tidus raised an eyebrow at the colourful, bulbous shapes of the guns. They looked more like children's toys than weapons; Tidus thought they might be no good for anything other than blowing bubbles but Mr Mosby and both twins each picked up a gun and loaded the batteries into it. The one who'd fetched the box stood up when he was done, unlatching the safety. The gun made an electronic whirr to signal that it was ready.

"I'm ready."

"Me too, let's go!" said the other twin, standing up next to his brother.

"Hang on! Hang on!" said Mr Mosby, fumbling with the batteries a bit. Tidus and the twins rolled their eyes while Mr Mosby sorted out his weaponry. Finally he snapped the battery compartment closed and stood up, laser gun at the ready. "Alright then… off we go, I suppose. You'll need to take the back door."

Tidus turned around to face the only door in the room. He lifted his sword, knowing that they were running out into danger. He crossed the room and put one hand on the handle, pausing to look behind him and make sure that Mr Mosby and the twins were close behind him. They all nodded to him. He nodded back, turned the knob and threw the door open.

* * *

**Glossary:**

**Mr Mosby and twins:** You probably noticed/knew that they're from The Suite Life of Zack and Cody too.

Oh, and I want to point this out. Everything I say about the geography of the area is merely based on my memory of where everything is in KH1. If I get something wrong please don't be nasty (as some people are wont to).


	11. A Great Shadow

**A Great Shadow**

The Heartless had been waiting for them, it seemed. There were already six of them ready to attack the moment Tidus opened the door. The three Soldiers took the chance to lunge immediately. Tidus parried their simultaneous blow and charged forward. The twins ran out behind him, each pointing their guns at a Solider and firing. A solid green laser beam shot out and knocked the Heartless back. The other three Heartless were unfamiliar to Tidus: hourglass-shaped creatures that floated and wore conical helmets, two were red and one was blue. They began to gather balls of magic on the tips of the spires of their helmets. All three fired at once. Tidus swung his sword to hit them back like baseballs. One flaming magic ball exploded into a burst of steam on the blade, which confused him momentarily. It was only in the nick of time that he was able to block the blue magic sphere. Immediately, Tidus' eyes turned to the remaining ball of flame that was bouncing towards one of the twins at the same time as a Soldier was flexing its claws to pounce. Tidus' lunged and tackled the blond boy to the ground just as the Soldier leaped. The flaming ball of magic collided with it and destroyed it.

"Are you guys alright?" Mr Mosby called over, tentatively holding his laser in front of him but not firing. The other twin seemed to be having a field day with his gun, even imitating the sound it made.

"We're fine," Tidus replied. The other boy cried out in alarm when the magic balls were fired at him. Shooting at them with the lasers didn't do anything. Tidus grabbed him by the sleeve and pulled him away. He held up his sword to defend and stared at it in shock. The watery blade was suddenly solid. Little wisps of steam rising off it showed it to be ice.

"There's no time to stand around!" Mr Mosby scolded him. "The wall is right over there." He pointed to a wooden wall at the end of the alleyway.

"And someone's already punched a hole in it!" said the boy beside him, pointing at a small hole in the bottom left corner that appeared to be just big enough for a full-grown man to crawl through. "We can make a break for it!"

Nobody had time to argue or protest as the boy made a mad dash towards that opening but before he got there a large dark portal opened up in front of him, depositing a Large Body on the scene. The blond skidded to a halt right in front of it. It beat its belly once and with a simple forward lurch tossed the boy right off his feet. He dropped his laser and flew back almost ten feet, landing in the shallow drain at the edge of the alley. Four more dark portals opened around the Large Body and Soldiers hopped out with clanking armour. Several Shadows also grew out of the ground. Tidus glanced at his sword, unsure if the change in it would affect it terribly. He'd already learnt the weakness of the Large Bodies now so maybe he could defeat them.

However, as he was readying his sword for battle again, another large dark portal opened above the new group of Heartless. A pair of large dark grey boots, that were even bigger than Tidus himself, with purple steel spats fell out of the portal and stomped on the ground with a _clank_ and a _crash_! Tidus gaped, unsure of what to make of this. The twin lying in the drain sat up, wiping the blood from his nose off his upper lip. His eyes widened when he spotted the animated boots backed by the small squad of Heartless. One of the boots lifted itself into the air and took a large step over the drain. It hovered over the small boy sitting up in the water. Tidus didn't even call out. He dived into the drain, grabbed the boy by the arm and threw him onto the pavement. The boot slammed down and crushed Tidus. Mr Mosby covered his mouth in horror and the twins both cringed.

The pain was something like Tidus hadn't ever felt before. The ache covered his entire body and there was a slight moment of darkness and panic when he couldn't see or breathe. His ears were ringing as the giant boot lifted and Tidus realised that it was going to try again. Against the protests of his whole body, he flipped his legs over his head and rolled out of the way, avoiding being stomped again but unable to dodge the resulting shockwave that was emitted this time. The wave indiscriminately knocked back everything it was able to reach, including other Heartless. Mr Mosby and the twins slammed into a wall and Tidus was thrown almost to the other side of the drain. The teen stood up, wiping away the blood that was dribbling out of both nostrils and glaring at the odd boots blocking the way through to the gap in the wall.

"I don't think we'll be making it out through there." He turned around to find only one Solider, the two Red Nocturnes and the Blue Rhapsody were the only Heartless on the other side. "It looks like we'll have to go through Second District."

Tidus charged towards the few behind them and executed his special move, hoping to take out more than one. He slashed through the Solider and the Blue Rhapsody. The Solider was suddenly frozen solid. The Blue Rhapsody was tossed and spun through the air to hit the ceiling in the corner. The Red Nocturnes watched this and then turned abruptly to stare at Mr Mosby and the twins. The three of them huddled together.

"Um, help!" squeaked the armed twin.

The Red Nocturnes advanced. Tidus snuck up quickly behind them and slashed them both across the middle, sending them spinning briefly. They both turned to him and Tidus noticed the Shadows sinking into the floor and the Soldiers clanking towards them. With all the noise they were making, Mr Mosby and the twins were able to hear them too and stared at them in fright.

"Don't just stand there! Get a head start!" Tidus yelled at them, jerking his thumb at the clear area behind him while the Red Nocturnes tried to get their bearings again. With a light push from Mr Mosby the twins nodded and ran underneath the Red Nocturnes, the hotel manager following close behind them. The Red Nocturnes readied their flaming balls of magic. "Oh no you don't."

Tidus swung his sword at one of them, sending it spinning into a wall, and stabbed the other one in the dark gap between its body and its helmet where its eyes were. He swung it over his head and threw it at the other just as it managed to fire its spell, hitting Tidus in the chest. They crashed and the unreleased magic exploded. Tidus rolled on the concrete a few times before getting up to pat away the remaining flames while the Soldiers charged at him. Shadows emerged from the ground and surrounded him. The ice encasing a Soldier cracked open, releasing it to fight with its friends. Tidus growled at them.

"I haven't got time for you guys!"

He stepped forward, swinging his sword down on one of the Shadows. There was a small flash and little hailstones scattered about upon impact. He slashed horizontally at the one beside it and ducked as one leaped to scratch him. It sailed over him. He parried the blow from a Soldier's spinning kick and delivered a crushing downward blow to the next one that tried the same thing, destroying it. The Red Nocturnes returned and hovered directly over Tidus with their fire magic ready. He rolled out of the way when they fired, the balls hitting each other and exploding in the faces of the other Heartless. The Large Body that had seemed largely uninterested in the fight suddenly beat at its belly and charged. Tidus jumped up and grabbed the edge of the balcony of one of the hotel's rooms and lifted himself onto it. The Large Body bowled over all of its allies. Tidus got up onto the balcony rail, admiring his new vantage point for a fraction of a second. He held his sword in one hand, flipping it over in his hands as he readied himself for what he was about to do. He leaped off the balcony, doing a backwards flip and hitting the Red Nocturnes with his special move again, obliterating them. A split second glance showed him the Heartless looking up at him, except the Large Body that had its back turned and was looking confused. Tidus spun a couple of times in midair to gain momentum and allowed himself to freefall back down with his sword above his head. The sword glowed in response. He slashed down, cutting through the Large Body's back and right down the middle of Soldier. The Large Body was thrown to the ground and the Soldier was vanquished. A shockwave resulted, beginning at his blade, that knocked back all of the Heartless around him and froze three of them. Tidus didn't waste any time, jumping onto the Large Body's back and stabbing it a few times until it disappeared. A Soldier tackled him again but he batted it away and turned to run around the corner and search for his makeshift party. There was suddenly a loud clanking sound behind him. He turned his head just as he was making his way around the corner and caught sight of the boots beginning to move again and they were moving towards him.

Mr Mosby and the twins were standing by the double doors that would apparently lead back into Second District. One of the twins gestured for him to hurry. He sprinted the rest of the way, the Heartless were coming around the corner after him in clanking armour or silently through the ground. The twins and the manager opened the door and Tidus charged out with the three following close behind.

Second District looked bad. It was clear that the Heartless ruled the area. Tidus scanned the area for Soul and found him in the middle of a circle of very large and powerful looking Heartless. He swayed on his feet before eventually collapsing onto his backside and letting his head drop forward. Tidus took a step to go and help him but was interrupted by a question from one of the twins:

"Where do we go now?"

"Um… up?" Tidus suggested, thinking that if he could give them a leg up onto the path beside the hotel they could run through the Gizmo Shop and hopefully come through to the other side and find the hostel. When he looked up Soldiers and Air Soldiers were looking down from the edge of the path. Shadows crawled out from under the door to the alleyway and appeared in full form. Shadows and Soldiers and Air Soldiers surrounded them, ready to attack with their immense advantage in numbers.

"No…" Tidus moaned, feeling all of his muscles go weak and his fingers and toes beginning to numb as a rock dropped into the pit of his stomach. "I shouldn't have let Soul stay here and fight by himself. There's way too many. We're finished."

The unarmed twin snatched the laser off his brother and shot at a Shadow, making its head snap back like a bobble-headed doll. "Even if we are done for, we should at least go down fighting!"

Tidus gulped and nodded. "Yeah, that's a fighter's way down." He readied his sword, even though he still felt weak, knowing that he was defeated but if a little kid like that twin could stand up in the face of danger like this then so could he.

The Heartless lunged. Mr Mosby and the armed twin put up as much of a fight as they could but their lasers didn't do very much damage and knocked them back at best. Tidus took a defensive position, mainly blocking and countering attacks as they were dealt. The other twin kept to the middle of the group, trying to make himself look small. He clutched his hands to his chest, feeling the helplessness of being the only one without a weapon. When a Shadow leaped for him he only spotted it when it was right above him. He screamed and put his arms up to protect himself. Tidus turned around upon hearing the cry and was tackled to the ground by a Soldier. Two more jumped on top to make a dog pile, trapping Tidus completely. He tried to lift himself back up and push the Heartless of him but they were too heavy. Tidus slumped to the ground and let his forehead hit the cobblestones. Mr Mosby and the armed twin were constantly forced to step backwards, making their circle smaller. The Heartless were slowly advancing on Soul, who looked up only once to gaze dismally at the small group they'd tried to save. The twin in the middle was shoved to the ground and the Shadow raised its claws to scratch his heart out.

A gunshot rang out through the square and the Shadow perched on the unarmed twin dissipated into smoke. The Heartless suddenly paused and turned to the Gizmo Shop where the sound had come from. Several more shots whizzed through the air and took down many more Heartless, including the Soldiers and Air Soldiers. Even a Large Body was defeated with just two shots to the face. Two of the Soldiers holding Tidus down were wiped out and the third jumped off him so that it might not meet the same fate.

Tidus slowly sat up and looked to where all of the Heartless were staring. On the roof of the Gizmo Shop, next to the bell tower was a figure, barely visible against the eternal night. That figure jumped down from the ridge and slid over the shingles, stopping at the gutter. Tidus squinted to get a better look. The first thing he made out was the gleaming red gun that was being put back into its holster and then a black cloak was tossed back to reveal a larger holster with a larger, shinier golden gun in it. Tidus couldn't see the details but the slim, bare arm of the figure seemed to be threaded into the gun itself and the holster opened up, releasing the weapon. The whole square was dead silent, hypnotised by the slow, deliberate movement of the gun being brought forward and a triple compartment at the back opening up.

"Soil," said a deep, low voice that seemed to be magically projected if only for the purposes of some sort of spell, "is my power."

Tidus' eyes widened in recognition. "Kaze? It couldn't be."

Kaze plucked three of his coloured vials from his belt, their colours shone like they were stars themselves. With a flick of his thumb, he tossed one of them into the air and had it land expertly in one of the compartments.

"_The deep sleep that envelops death_: **Steel Grey**!"

He didn't shout but his voice still echoed over the entire square. He tossed another one into the air and caught it in the second compartment as the first one closed.

"_The rising of boiling blood_: **Heat Crimson**!"

He brought the last one up to his lips and kissed it before flicking it up and dropping it in its compartment.

"_The brilliance that pierces the darkness_: **Lightning Yellow**!"

The wind suddenly seemed to swirl around him and burst out in a giant gust that caused everything capable of movement to flinch. He pointed the gun down at the square and said his final words before the spell was complete:

"_Envoy of the storms, bringer of the thundering tempest_! _I summon thee: __**Ixion**_!"

With a fantastic boom an enormous cloud of smoke burst forth from the barrel of Kaze's gun. The smoke began to twist and whirl as though a cyclone had suddenly started in the midst of it and then the three colours he had called upon to summon his beast emerged, twisting around each other. Their tips met when they reached the stone ground and with a great flash of light and a short electrical charge that vaporised all of the Heartless near it, the beast emerged. It was elegant. A giant six-legged horse with shimmering dark blue fur stepped into the square. Its flank, chest and neck were covered in shining silver armour that allowed its voluminous, wavy white mane and tail to billow magnificently. White feathers peaked from under the steel boots and as it walked Tidus caught glimpses of glittering silver shoes on its golden hooves. Its face was also covered with a mask of steel, allowing nothing through but the beast's large, sharp horn that had a large curve near the base so that it almost looked like a hook.

It pointed its horn at the sky and shot a small bolt of electricity. The bolt discharged and storm clouds suddenly began to form, rapidly billowing out until they covered the entire square. Ixion's horn glowed and sparks of electricity danced all over its body. It pawed the ground and threw its head back to let out a shrieking neigh and the clouds were split open by great forks of lightning. Tidus jumped to his feet and crouched over the unarmed twin while Mr Mosby guarded the other from the incredible strikes. Soul shielded his eyes with his arms. The air around them buzzed and crackled, heating up until it began to burn. It was hard to breathe against the stifling heat and Tidus thought that if he had to endure any more of this he might just catch alight.

Ixion struck its hoof against the ground, kicking up a small spark and the lightning assault suddenly ended. Tidus panted in the suddenly cool air that felt like it was sliding over his skin with the tingle of electricity still hanging in the atmosphere. The twin he protected cautiously peeked around his arms. Seeing its job was done, Ixion bowed its head and glowed white. Its entire form diminished into a small white ball that shot up into the dark storm clouds it had created. The clouds immediately scattered, leaving no trace that the summoned beast had even been there. Tidus looked around the square. Every single Heartless that had crawled across the cobblestones was gone.

Tidus leaped to his feet and pulled the little blond boy up with him. "We have to get out of here now! Before they come back," he said. The other twin was quickly on his feet and helping up Mr Mosby.

"But where do we go from here?" asked the twin next to Tidus.

"There!" Tidus decided, pointing to the Gizmo Shop. "I'll give you a leg up onto the path. Run to the Gizmo Shop and go straight through until you come out at the back. There's a mermaid fountain, you won't miss it."

"Wait, are you implying that we're to go alone?" Mr Mosby exclaimed aghast.

"You'll have to. I need to check on my buddy," Tidus explained, pointing his thumb over his shoulder at Soul who was still slumped in the middle of the square. He ran over to the wall and crouched beside it, holding his hands out as a step. "Come on! The faster we get moving, the more time we have before the shadow monsters come back!"

The twins were the first to comply, using Tidus' helping hand to climb over the wall and onto the path. Mr Mosby was slower and stiffer than they were but they both reached down to give him an extra helping hand to get onto the path. They headed off to follow Tidus' directions. Knowing that they were gone, Tidus ran back to meet Soul, picking up the sword he'd dropped along the way.

"Soul! Are you okay?" he asked, kneeled down next to the tow-haired boy.

Soul looked up at him and gave him a weak smile. "I think I can still stand up." He shifted and steadily got to his knees. He stumbled just trying to get to his feet from there. Tidus took Soul's left arm and slung it over his shoulder. He wrapped an arm around his friend's torso and lifted him to his feet. He gave Soul a playful smile that brought a bit of cheer to the atmosphere.

"Looks like we'll be taking the long way 'round," he joked, helping Soul to walk across the square to the stairs. They both crossed their fingers to hope that the Shadow monsters wouldn't come back soon.

On the other side of the Gizmo Shop Mr Mosby and the twins were running down the steps to the square. Kaze jumped down from the rooftops with ease and his summoning gun was now hidden under his cloak as it always was.

"Okay, so where's the hostel?" asked one twin. The other spotted Kaze and unintentionally pointed his laser at the tall, dark man.

"Hey, you were on the roof!" he exclaimed. Kaze saw the laser and drew his red gun, pointing it unwaveringly at the child. The twin put his hands up and took a couple of steps back.

"Oh my gosh! Mr Mosby! Zack! Cody! You're all alive!" London exclaimed, running out into the square with her arms spread wide and her shoes back on her feet.

"Oh, London it's good to see that you're well," Mr Mosby sighed.

"Go back," Kaze clipped, putting his gun away and glaring at London. "You're not safe unless you're at the hostel. Return now."

London pouted and stomped her foot. "I just wanted to see Mr Mosby! I want him to be okay!"

"As you can see, I'm just fine, London," Mr Mosby replied.

There was a low _bam_ when Tidus closed the Gizmo Shop's door behind him, dragging Soul along with him. The two made it slowly down the stairs to join the group standing by the fountain.

"We should return quickly," Kaze insisted. "The Heartless never stay away for long."

Mr Mosby was just about to agree to that when London suddenly pointing somewhere behind them over their heads and screamed: "oh my god! What is that? Look out!"

They all turned around and ducked when a dark grey clawed hand swiped at them. It doubled back and floated in front of them at the ready. Tidus clenched his teeth when he recognised the colour and pattern of the brace the hand was attached to – was the same purple steel as the spats. Tidus got to his feet quickly and shoved Soul to Mr Mosby.

"You guys go to the hostel," he ordered, pointing in the direction they had to go. "It's down that street, number ninety-six."

Mr Mosby struggled to hoist Soul to a standing position but from there was able to help the boy walk. The twins ran ahead while London stayed with Mr Mosby with her hands over her mouth in shock but not actually helping him. Tidus pointed his sword at his new adversary and Kaze pointed his gun at it, ready to attack. London looked around tentatively, fearing that there might be more Heartless nearby. She looked up and gasped.

"Mr Mosby, get out of the way!" she exclaimed, pushing him and Soul over.

"What the-?" Mr Mosby snapped. Another giant hand descended from the sky quickly and grabbed London, lifting her up into the air. "Miss Tipton!"

"What?" Tidus screamed in disbelief.

"Run!" Kaze ordered, pushing Tidus in the back and running forward to pick Soul up off the ground and put the teen over his shoulder. Tidus turned around and readied his sword for battle. "Tidus, you can't fight this one! It's too powerful for you."

"But it's got London!"

The giant hands reunited as a pair and the spare one grabbed the fist holding a screaming girl and shook her violently. They suddenly threw her to the ground. One fisted itself and pounded her roughly. It was followed up by the other, which curled its fingers and slammed down onto her body, piercing her chest with one of its claws. Mr Mosby gasped in horror, wanting to call to her but he was speechless. She'd stopped screaming as well. The hand rose into the air again with London impaled on its middle finger. With a simple flick of its wrist it carelessly tossed her into a wall. As she fell to the ground limply a pink heart floated away from her body. It disappeared into darkness while her physical body was also enveloped in black mist. The body hit the ground with a clank and the new Soldier Heartless lifted its face off the ground and looked around.

Tidus' legs suddenly felt like jelly. His mouth and throat went dry and his hands started to get clammy. He stared at the hands wide-eyed. He mentally reminded himself that he had to stay brave and that what they did to London only gave him more of a reason to destroy them but he couldn't move forward. Even if he willed his feet to move they only shuffled backwards as the hands hovered above the fountain menacingly.

"Start running!" Kaze shouted at him.

Despite his will telling him that he should stand and fight on principle, he turned and fled, running just behind Mr Mosby and Kaze. They dashed back up the street and Kaze held open the door to the hostel, watching the strange Heartless warily. It didn't try to actually chase them. By the way it was moving it seemed to be looking around. It eventually floated away, perhaps to look for the rest of its body. Kaze ducked into the hostel and closed the door behind him.

Jim looked up from the glasses he was washing at the bar when he heard the door close. Tidus slumped against the wall beside it, letting himself slide down to the floor. Kaze immediately took Soul to the lounge area. The people sitting on the couch got up quickly to let him lay Soul down across the cushions. Mr Mosby sat down on a nearby chair, putting his head in his hands while each twin tried to awkwardly comfort him by putting a hand on his shoulder. Tidus brought his knees up to his chest and let his head drop onto them. Nothing that he had ever seen in his entire life had ever made him as angry, sad or scared as that Heartless did.

* * *

**It was only after I proofread this that I realised I'd made Kaze look like a massive troll** in this chapter but I can explain that. And sorry for the explicit violence if that's not your thing because it's kinda my thing and I love writing this stuff into stories. Also, sorry for making it so long.

**Glossary: **

**Ixion:** from Final Fantasy (various). Ixion is one of the frequently recurring summons. Like all of the recurring summons, it undergoes a redesign every time its used but it is pretty much always portrayed as an equine beast and often with a hook-like horn. The design I described is my own design for the purposes of this story.

**Feathers:** okay, horses don't have actual feathers and neither does Ixion in this story. In horsey-terms, feathers are a genetic trait of some breeds - most notably draft breeds - to have longer fur on their legs starting at the knees. Clydesdales are an excellent example of this trait.

**Boots:** obviously, horses don't actually wear boots either, especially when they're already wearing shoes. Horse boots are actually just some kind of brace that is wrapped around the bottom half of the leg to protect it from bugs, dirt or injury.

**Summoning soils:** in Final Fantasy: Unlimited, Kaze uses these colourful substances called 'soils' to summon beasts and they all do basically what Ixion does in this chapter: troll the enemies by being conveniently overpowered. The soils listed in this chapter and the incantations before them are quoted directly from the anime (in Japanese, the English dub uses slightly different wording). The fourth line, however, is completely made up.


	12. The World's Belfry

**The World's Belfry**

There was an odd quiet in the hostel that night. Nobody seemed to be talking and if they did talk to each other it was in low whispers. The atmosphere felt fragile and awkward. Tidus hadn't moved from his spot right next to the door for over an hour. Kaze disappeared after taking Soul back to his designated room and leaving him in the care of two elderly medics. Mr Mosby, insisting that he had some kind of authority and responsibility (although was a little vague on the details of what that entailed), eventually stood up and asked to see the manager. While he and Madame Ebony spoke in hushed tones the twins quietly occupied themselves in the reading corner.

That night the number of residents at the hostel seemed to have dwindled. It wasn't as bustling and joyful as it was when Tidus first arrived. Tidus noticed this and kept a close eye on the door, waiting for his friends to come back. The Foreman duly returned with his little group of the week's misbehavers, including – to Tidus' relief – Pippi. Alana and Miley returned much later after dinner with their friend.

Tidus felt a hand come down on his shoulder and looked up. Alana gazed down at him with a smile despite the sadness in her eyes. "Hey," she said softly. "What's with the long face all of a sudden?"

He dropped his knees and stretched his legs out. Alana crouched down next to him and hugged her ankles patiently. He had a feeling she already somewhat knew but was just trying to lift his spirits somehow by making him talk about it.

"Wait, Mr Mosby, you're not really going to leave us here!"

Tidus and Alana looked up. Mr Mosby stood in front of the twins trying to look professional but his face was betraying him. "I just think that this would be best for you. The shadow monsters are constantly invading the hotel and I can't guarantee that you'll be safe there. When we had to leave The Tipton I made a promise to your mother that I would protect you two with my life if she couldn't."

"But she did!" one of the twins argued.

"She did. But because of that she's now gone. I've already broken one promise and I won't do that again. That's why I think you should stay here and work with Mrs Ebony. I need to return to Second District and look after the hotel."

"Then the shadow monsters will get you too."

"They might," Mr Mosby admitted, clasping his hands together.

Tidus and Alana glanced at each other. Alana nodded her head in direction of the stairs. "Shall we go somewhere quieter?"

* * *

Alana's room was not much bigger or much different to Tidus' room, except that it was decorated with personal items. She had a blue doona covered with butterflies, a corkboard with photos, cards and notices pinned to it, a pile of novels on her desk, a maroon cardigan hanging over the back of her chair, star-printed yellow curtains, posters of people and places, a colourful pencil tin that was crammed with stationery and an unlined notepad. She was on a lower floor and didn't have a nice view of the town, only a nice view of the roof of the next building.

Alana opened her window and climbed onto her desk, gesturing for Tidus to follow suit. She jumped onto the gutter of the next building and crawled up the shingles until she was sitting on the ridge next to the chimney. Tidus sat down next to her and they both looked up at the twinkling stars in the sky. The low, wide roof allowed them a better view than the window did and a half moon was already high in the sky.

"Isn't it kind of dangerous to be outside?" Tidus asked. "The shadow monsters could come out and get us here."

"They could," Alana nodded, "but honestly they could get us anywhere."

"Except in First District, apparently."

"Yeah… I don't know what the deal with that place is. Everywhere else in this town it's quiet and dark and frightening but in First District it's bright and warm and peaceful. I heard what was going on today and even through all of that there were never any monsters in First District. I wonder how that happens."

"So you did hear about what happened."

"Only generally. What happened to you?" Alana asked, casting a sideways glance at Tidus.

"Don't pretend that you don't know," Tidus answered. He sighed in resignation. "I did a stupid thing. I thought I would be able to fight the whole army of shadow monsters and save Mr Mosby and the twins. I had this idea in my head that I could be awesome at it and it would go off without a hitch. But in end, Soul just got injured and London died."

"Soul and London?"

"Yeah, Soul's a new guy here. London just came by to ask for help for the guys at the hotel but if I had just stayed put then she would have been fine."

Tidus brought his knees up and hid his face behind them again. Alana looked away, panning over the rooftops amongst which they sat. Some of the chimneys were smoking gently and all around town windows shone like yellow rectangular stars.

"But that's not even the worst part," Tidus continued, lifting his head. Alana turned back to him and blinked. "I think I can just give up now."

"Give up? On what? Why?"

"Just imagine… if my friends really are here in this town and they got caught up in the swarm even by accident… then they're gone. There's no hope left."

"They could have been in First District."

"That's just wishful thinking."

Alana shuffled closer and drew Tidus into a one-armed hug. "But it's possible. And just think of all the good you've done as well. Maybe Mr Mosby and those twins wouldn't be okay if it wasn't for you. You can't give up hope yet. Even I still dream about seeing my mum and dad and my big sister again."

"How do you know they weren't swallowed up when you lost your world?"

"I don't. But I hope they weren't. I really hope they weren't."

"How can you still have hope at this stage?" Tidus asked, lifting his head to look at her. "I haven't been here as long as you have and the craziness of this place is already starting to get to me."

"I don't have much left. I've got to believe in that if nothing else. And I have to somehow believe that it'll come true." She titled her head right back to look at the sky with its sparse stars. There hadn't been any disappearing in the past few days – it must have been a good sign. She thought fondly of a song her sister used to sing whimsically around the house that reminded her to have hope all the time:

"_A dream is a wish your heart makes  
When you're fast asleep.  
In dreams you will lose your heartache.  
Whatever you wish for you keep."_

Tidus allowed himself to lean on her shoulder and look up with her.

"_Have faith in your dreams and someday  
Your rainbow will come smiling through.  
No matter how your heart is grieving,  
If you keep on believing,  
The dream that you wish  
Will come true." _

A breeze blew by the two sitting on the roof and was suddenly interrupted with a short, blustery _whoosh_ that confused them a little bit. The light tap of a leather sole hitting clay tiles signalled the arrival of another. Kaze's tall, dark and thin figure, as imposing as always, had appeared with his cloak billowing around him as if he'd just flown in on the wind. He was still armed with his guns and in one hand he held the water sword from Rothbart's drawer.

"What are _you_ doing here?" Tidus snapped.

"You two should return indoors, the darkness is still strong tonight," Kaze said, ignoring Tidus.

"You should have helped from the start!" Tidus shouted, standing up and glaring into Kaze's eyes defiantly. "What was all that about not fighting shadow monsters as a hobby? And then you came to save us anyway. What gives? If you could have done that from the start, why didn't you? If you had been there Soul wouldn't have been hurt. And London… why couldn't you do the same thing to save her? What stopped you?"

Kaze didn't bat an eyelid. His face didn't show any kind of emotion or remorse but he paused and considered his response. "The situation changed. It was suddenly very dangerous and there were Heartless inside the hostel itself."

Alana gasped. "Really? Inside? That's never happened before. Is that possible?"

Kaze nodded. "Technically, there's nothing to stop Heartless from entering the hostel as they please but they don't. Perhaps there is something that they're looking for that gives them no reason to come to the hostel. Tonight things were different. They were swarming uncontrollably. Did it seem familiar to either of you?"

Alana shook her head. "I was in First District. I didn't know this was going on."

Tidus also shook his head.

"I see, you didn't witness them in you world," Kaze muttered. Eyebrows rose as Tidus and Alana began to understand what Kaze was talking about. "The Heartless are known to enter frenzied mode as they get nearer to the World's Heart."

"Then they take it and destroy everything," Alana whispered. Her eyes turned down and she wiped the tears that were starting to well up.

"Where will we go if we lose this world too?" Tidus asked. His throat felt narrower when he breathed as all of the hope was sucked out of his heart in that instant.

"There will be nowhere else we can go," Kaze replied honestly. "We arrived in this world by virtue of our hearts' strength and also with some luck. The process may not repeat a second time and we'll all be lost."

"That's why you decided to fight in the end," Tidus deducted. "But still, London-"

"Summoning magic is extremely powerful but also draining," Kaze explained. "Usually, I can only summon once in twenty-seven hours. The consequence of using magic after it has already been drained is that it will cut into your own life force. Such actions are almost always fatal. At the time, that Heartless in the square was too powerful for the both of us. But…"

Kaze held the sword to Tidus. "You should not abandon this."

Tidus snatched it bitterly and sat back down, laying it across his knees. "What's the point of keeping it, though? It didn't do me any good."

"It has done you plenty of good," Kaze insisted. "Your will and ability to fight has kept your heart strong and brought you here. When you realise your true strength, that sword will also show you its true form."

Tidus stared at the odd blade. It had thawed now and was bubbling and flowing like water again. Remembering how it had acted so differently when fighting the Blue Rhapsody made Tidus realise that he didn't even know the capabilities of the weapon he used. It was more than just a blade. He felt that every time he used it he bonded with it just a little bit more as if it had a heart of its own.

The stars twinkled down on them and Tidus leaned back to gaze up. "I still dream about my islands a lot. Do you guys think that they'll ever return?"

"You know they can't," Alana answered with a shake of her head.

"Maybe not yet," Tidus said.

A bell pealed across the night, alerting the three on the roof. Tidus wondered if it was a special night or something because he had never heard a bell toll in the town before. This ringing, however, was extraordinary. The night seemed to brighten and Tidus felt as though his heart was dancing. He turned to Alana, wondering if she was feeling the same thing. She had her eyes closed and her chin raised, facing the direction of the tower on top of the Gizmo Shop.

"That's the bell…" Kaze noted.

Tidus turned to him. "What bell?"

"Inside the Gizmo Shop's spire tower there's a large bell," Kaze explained. "It actually existed there before the Gizmo Shop and the factory was built around it. It used to be rung each morning and it touched the heart of every person. It resonates directly with the World's Heart. For some reason, ten years ago they suddenly stopped ringing it. The belfry was boarded up and the bell wasn't tolled again."

"Then who's tolling it now?" Alana wondered. "And why are they tolling it now?"

Kaze shrugged. "Who knows."

Tidus smiled. "It fills you with hope, doesn't it?"

Alana and Kaze turned to him, using only their eyes to ask for clarification.

"I don't know how or why but I get this feeling that hearing this bell is like a sign that I'm one step closer to being home again."

"I feel it too," Alana agreed. "But…"

"I think our worlds will come back eventually," Tidus interjected. "I can't stand the idea that my islands will be gone forever. There's gotta be a way to bring them back."

"Hm… oh yeah," Alana suddenly remembered: "there were some rumours in First District about that. One of those boys in the item shop told me that his uncle was travelling with two friends to try and save the worlds. I don't know if that means they're going to try to bring them back or if they're just going to try and stop the shadows taking any more."

The bell pealed a second time.

"I have a feeling that they're coming back," Tidus insisted.

Alana scoffed. "Now _that_ is wishful thinking."

They sat in silence for a moment until Kaze turned to look up at the moon and muttered: "it's almost midnight. You should sleep."

Alana and Tidus agreed to that and climbed back down the roof to crawl through Alana's window. They bid each other goodnight and Tidus returned to his own room, leaving Alana to prepare herself for bed. She dressed in a nightgown and as she brushed her hair she climbed back onto her desk to look out of her window to the roof ridge. Kaze was still standing there, keeping a silent vigil.

The bell tolled for the third and final time.

Putting her brush down, Alana searched around her desk for her notepad and opened it. She wasn't an artist and her drawing and painting skills left something to be desired but she had nothing else remaining of her world except her memories. She flipped through the pages of sketches and pictures of all of the things she had lost: a house inside a tree with a dark, circular door, the kitchen with the sunbeams shining in through the round window, her bedroom amongst the branches, her friends with the herd of shelkies and her family standing by the river as it passed through the forest and into the meadow. She picked up the book and caressed the edges of her passable attempt at a painting with her thumb, singing:

"_Don't let your heart be filled with sorrow,  
For all you know tomorrow  
The dream that you wish  
Will come true."_

* * *

In Second District Sora vanquished the Opposite Armour and sealed Traverse Town's Keyhole, one step closer to saving the worlds and saving his friends.

* * *

**Ah, a 12th chapter.** I'm feeling proud of myself for finally getting up and trying to finish this story, especially after it went on a little bit of a hiatus.

**Glossary:**

**Song:** "A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes" from Cinderella (Disney version). The second bit of singing is just a little reprise of the same song.

**Shelkies:** As far as I know, shelkies are just a creature that I made up. Imagine that they look like orange and white, fuzzy goats with big curly ears instead of big curly horns and paws instead of hoofs. I'll have to get around to drawing a picture of them someday.


	13. The Clearout

**The Clear-out**

In the morning everything felt peaceful, like the darkness had passed on. Regardless of whatever happened the night before, Tidus knew better. He was awake early despite the late night and took himself downstairs to get to breakfast. He expected for there to be the normal crowd of people but when he entered the lobby it was almost deserted. Only a few tables were occupied with the early risers, although people tended not to sleep in so that they didn't miss breakfast. The reality of last night's consequences sunk in completely. London hadn't been the plague's only victim.

Tidus wandered across the floor slowly in a daze, thinking sadly of how many of the tinkermen were now gone. A quiet whir caught his attention. He turned to look at the piano. The lamp was still on and Tidus' robot was still sitting there. Its eyes blinked on and its head turned, panning the room. Tidus gawked at it. The solar panels folded up and tucked away automatically and the robot's tread wheels kicked into gear, turning the robot around as it explored its new environment and stopping at the edge of the piano top. Tidus dashed over to the piano and beamed.

"You're working! Jim did it, you're really working now," he said in amazement. To be honest, he'd never had much hope for the little robot. It looked like it was just a square block on treads and when he'd first seen it at the Gizmo Shop everything was dirty, dusty and rusty. It looked ancient like it had been around for hundreds of years.

The robot's eye scopes zoomed in on Tidus. Almost every move the little robot made was accompanied with a mechanical noise. "Wall-E…" it said in a little mechanical voice.

"Wally?" Tidus repeated, raising an eyebrow. "I'm not Wally, I'm Tidus."

"Wall-E."

"What are you talking about? Oh snap, don't tell me this is some weird alien language for 'exterminate' or something."

To Tidus' further amazement, the robot's arms popped out of their place for more freedom of movement. Its flat hands tapped the bottom of the yellow metal box that made up most of its body, a section that was caked with mud. Tidus licked his thumb and rubbed and scratched the grime away, revealing a label: WALL•E.

"Huh. So that's your name then? Wall-E," Tidus said.

The robot brought its arms in and tapped itself with both hands. "Wall-E."

Tidus smiled. "Well, it's great that you're back in shape, Wall-E."

The conversation trailed off, although Tidus supposed there wasn't really much conversation in the first place (Wall-E didn't seem to be able to say anything other than his name). He sat down at the piano and stared at the little robot.

"Hey, what's that?"

Tidus cried out in alarm and almost fell off the piano stool, flailing his arms and legs to get his balance back. He turned to the sudden voice and sighed. It was just Miley.

"Sorry. Did I scare ya?" she asked.

"No, I was just surprised," Tidus answered quickly, sitting up a little straighter and trying to look like he hadn't just been waving his limbs around like a fool. "This little guy is… _was_ one of my projects at the Gizmo Shop. But as you can see, he's all better now."

Wall-E looked from Tidus to Miley and manoeuvred his treads to stand in front of her. The girl smiled. "Cool! You fixed a whole robot! Now that's what I call impressive."

"Yeah, well, I didn't really fix it," Tidus admitted. "I mean, I did tinker around with him a lot, but Jim was the guy who really worked out how to fix him."

"Jim? The guy in the kitchens?"

"Yeah.

"Well if he's so good with machines why ain't he a tinkerman too?"

Tidus shrugged. "Dunno. He told me he just wanted to help Madame Ebony. Didn't say why, though." Tidus put his hands behind his head as the conversation died again. He twisted around to look at the lobby a second time. "Slow crowd today, huh?"

"And everyone knows why," Miley said, sitting down on the edge of the piano stool. Tidus shuffled to the other edge to give her more room. She shuffled into a more comfortable position facing the keys and folded her hands in her lap. "Hey, if you're not doing anything today, Madame Ebony has been asking for help to clean up the empty rooms. People's stuff got left behind…"

She lifted one hand to stroke the keys of the piano and pressed down Middle C.

"I take it you didn't volunteer."

Miley shook her head. "It's way too depressing, y'know." She looked up at him.

"I know. I keep imagining and dreaming about my friends getting eaten by shadows. But I think they'll be alright. You heard the bell toll last night, right?"

"Yeah, I heard that. Woke me up. What, do you think that's a sign or something?"

"I think so," Tidus nodded.

A hand clapped both of their shoulders, trapping them. They both turned around. Alana was standing behind them, giving them an expectant look. "You guys are helping with the clear-out, aren't you?"

Tidus and Miley both shook their heads definitively, wide-eyed with the fear that they might now be forced into it. However, Alana just sighed and stepped back, crossing her arms. "Geez, I knew it. Nobody really wants to help out so Madame Ebony has started going around and roping people into it by force. She wants me on the first floor at ten o'clock sharp. Unless you have plans, there's no way that you're getting out of it either."

"If you two don' have anywhere tae go," Madame Ebony piped up, popping out from behind Alana as if she'd appeared there by magic, "I need more helpers for the clear-out."

"Um… w-w-well, actually…" Tidus stuttered.

"Er, ya see… um…" Miley stammered.

Unable to think up a lie fast enough, Madame Ebony cut them off. "Good. The courier and mail services don' run on Sunday, so I need some people to take stuff down tae the Lost Shop."

"The Lost Shop?" Tidus echoed. Miley gulped and went pale.

"Y-you mean, like… _go outside_?" She whispered.

"Yer have tae. Should be fairly safe now – I think the shadow monsters are all pooped out after that stint last night."

"The shadow monsters aren't ever 'pooped out', Madame Ebony, they just regroup," Alana pointed out.

"In any case, they're not big in numbers right now. If ya take the paths less travelled ya should be okay, they tend tae be drawn tae places where people gather."

"But I still don't wanna go out," Miley protested. "I get freaked in the short walk to the Gizmo Shop just thinking about how a shadow monster could jump out at any moment and grab me! Going all the way to the Lost Shop in Sixth District? I can't do it."

"Then ya have tae clean rooms. But Tidus, I really want ya tae go."

"Me? Why?" Tidus said.

"Jus' 'cause I know yer one o' the few people here with a good chance o' makin' it back alive.

Tidus looked down. That made a lot of sense. "Okay, I'll go then. No need to make Miley go if she's scared."

"Ya need more than one person an' it'll take more than one trip," Madame Ebony explained. "An' I asked Kaze tae go with ya."

"He agreed?" Tidus said sceptically.

"O' course. It _is_ a long way tae the Lost Shop."

"What is the 'Lost Shop'?" asked Tidus.

"It's a place in Sixth District," Alana explained. "It's a big facility like the Gizmo Shop but it deals in second hand things. In this town, that usually means stuff that people leave behind when they get taken by shadows. It's a pretty long way away. You have to get across Fourth and Fifth District, which is easy enough but the urban cluster between Fifth and Sixth is really vast. It takes an hour one way on foot."

"Wow, that is a long way," Tidus breathed in awe. If he walked for an hour on the Destiny Islands, he would probably make it around the entire perimeter of his town. The thought that Traverse Town could really be that expansive was mind-boggling.

"We'll make a more concrete plan later," Madame Ebony proposed. "Fer now, I want ya all tae have a good breakfast. It'll be a hard day's work fer all o' ya."

There was a whir and a whiz. Tidus turned back to the robot on the piano. It was leaning forward intently, hanging on every word of the conversation. It exchanged glances with Tidus. "Hey, do you wanna help?"

The robot nodded. Tidus grinned at it.

"I'm sure I can find a use fer ya, ya wee thing you. As fer the rest o' ya, chop-chop! Get yer bellies full 'cause we don' have all day tae sit around an' discuss it. I want everyone done by nine-thirty then I'll split ya into teams."

Tidus and Miley sighed and got up, making their way over to the tables.

* * *

Madame Ebony sorted her teams efficiently and mostly arbitrarily. The brief was quick and delivered with a no-nonsense finality about it before the manager of the hostel explained how each team was to carry out their duty. As promised, Tidus was placed in the team that was tasked with transporting objects to the Lost Shop. The first job was to visit the recently vacated rooms and fill cardboard boxes with the remaining possessions regardless of whether they were intact or not. The boxes then had to be loaded into a cart that needed someone strong to pull it since the hostel didn't own any draft animals or vehicles. Tidus and his team found that it would indeed take more than one trip and they would probably be making the long walk back and forth at least twice. Once every item from every room was packed and the cart was loaded they had a lunch break. Then the small team of five – Tidus, Kaze, Pippi, an enigmatic girl with dark skin and white hair who wore a glowing crystal on a thread around her neck and, to her own dismay, Miley Cyrus – began the afternoon with the first trek to the Lost Shop.

"Why me?" Miley wailed, swapping the handle of the wagon she was pulling to the other hand. "I told her I didn't wanna do it. What's she got against me?"

"I don't think she has anything against you personally," Tidus assured her, holding up his sword and scanning the area, daring the Heartless to attack in an almost playful manner. "You were just left over."

"And we needed another person to pull the wagon," Pippi added. Due to her monstrous strength, she was tasked with drawing the cart. "The more stuff we can move the better."

"Yeah, four hours travelling on foot is way more than enough," Tidus said.

It had only taken them twenty minutes to pass by Fourth and Fifth District. As they wheeled their cargo down the narrow, cobbled streets in the so-called 'urban cluster' Tidus felt a little daunted by the idea of spending such a long time travelling through this area. It seemed more dangerous to walk down these darker, quieter streets, the shadows could be hiding anywhere. Kaze led the way and seemed to have a good idea of where he was going. He wasn't on guard either, which boosted the group's confidence in the security of the path. The streets were winding, organised organically with no intended plan to them. They were also very lonely even though the area was definitely not empty. The walls of crammed houses and their yellow-glow windows and iron streetlamps mounted on walls to save space in on the small road surrounded them like an urban forest. They all looked the same to Tidus and the journey was turning out to be extremely boring with no sign of Heartless and the end nowhere in sight.

"So… I don't think we've met before," the blonde piped up, turning to the tow-haired girl. Tidus couldn't remember if he'd ever seen her before; the Tinkerman's Hostel used to be so busy. She was shortish, barefoot and was clad quite scantily in a strapless blue bra and a matching sarong that was tied around her hips like a loincloth.

"That would be because we haven't," she replied standoffishly.

"Don't be mean, Kida, he's just asking," Pippi reprimanded with a childish smirk.

"Kida? Is that your name?" Tidus asked.

"Kidagakash Nedakh… but yes, you can call me Kida," the girl replied, with that last part added almost sheepishly.

"And you're a tinkerman too, right? Or tinkerwoman or something…?" Tidus said.

"Yes. I was originally in the special orders section but when it closed down I was moved to small repairs."

"Hey, that's the same as me!" Tidus exclaimed. "Actually, that's the same as all of us… except Kaze." He cast a sideways glance at Kaze but the man didn't give any indication that he was listening or that he'd even overheard. "Why would Madame Ebony put all of us out here like this? It's too coincidental to just be a coincidence."

Kida held up the glowing crystal around her neck. "The dark creatures seem to dislike the light from this crystal."

"Oh great, so everyone has a real purpose here except me," Miley grumbled. "Kaze can shoot stuff, Tidus can hack stuff, Kida can glow stuff away and Pippi can punch through walls, while I just drag this itty-bitty wagon with two boxes in it."

"Hey, I'm sure you have a talent," said Tidus.

"I know I have a talent," Miley retorted. "It just doesn't have anything to do with pulling wagons and fighting away the shadow monsters that I know are gonna get us!"

"I know you've never been this far away from the hostel or the Gizmo Shop for this long," Pippi sighed, "but there's no need to be paranoid. We've got Kaze here."

"And me," Tidus reminded them.

"Yeah, but mostly we've got Kaze."

"Hey! I'm just as reliable as him."

"What is your talent?" Kida asked Miley, dodging the oncoming, immature argument.

"Well, all I do is sing, really," Miley answered. "That's it. On my home world I was just a middle school student with pretty average grades who could sing."

"Singing? That's a cool talent!" Tidus smiled. "Sing something for us now."

Miley put a finger to her chin and squinted her eyes, thinking of something she knew how to sing. Then she took a breath:

"_The water is wide, I can-not cross o'er  
And neither have I the wings to fly.  
Give me a boat that can carry two,  
And both shall row, my true love and I."_

Kida put her hands together in gentle, quiet applause while Tidus and Pippi just grinned.

"If I didn't have my hands full, I would clap too," Pippi said. "That was pretty good."

"Aw, shucks, thanks guys," Miley said with a grin.

"If I had any talent for it, I would sing," Tidus added. Come to think of it, this was the first friend he had ever met with a talent for singing. Selphie was a dramatist but not a singer. He'd never heard Kairi sing but he was sure that she would probably be good at it (though, he couldn't say that for sure because he'd never heard her even try to utter a note in tune). Wakka, Riku and Sora, however, were definitely no good at it. "Hey, would you mind singing something else for us?"

"Sure. Have you got a song in mind?"

"Oh, do you know this one…?" Pippi started off suggesting. The rest of the journey to Sixth District passed by a lot more pleasantly.

* * *

**This chapter took so long to get out. It doesn't help that I haven't had a review since chapter 9 but dammit, regardless of whether this story is being read, I swear I will finish it!** I'm just saying, it doesn't help. Reviews are a good source of encouragement for all authors. A review would be particularly nice for this story because I'm not sure I got characterisation right for a couple of the characters here (talking about non-OC's, of course).

Digressing a little bit, I can't believe what actually inspired me to write the rest of this chapter: reading the summary of Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream, Drop, Distance. I can't believe it because it gave me a minor conniption and I swear I almost had an aneurysm. Tetsuya Nomura really disappointed me. I won't provide any spoilers here, but it's unusual that something that pissed me off so much gave me the drive to continue a story that has nothing to do with it.

And so begins Adventure #3. I can't say for sure how many chapters this story will end up being, all I have officially decided is that after this adventure, there are going to be 2 more 'adventures' before the end. Enjoy!

**Glossary:**

**Song:** "Waly Waly" (a.k.a: "The Water is Wide"). A really simple folk song of Scottish-English origin. There are many, many versions and renditions of it.

**Middle C:** the note that is right in the middle of the piano. Actually, that depends, since different companies may add more lower or higher notes on particular models, but generally, when you sit down at a piano Middle C is right in front of you.

**Wall-E:** You guys should all know the adorable little junk-crushing robot from the movie of the same name! Wall-E is such a sweet movie and I do recommend it.

**Kidagakash Nedahk:** one of the main characters from the Disney Movie Atlantis: The Lost Empire. It's a mediocre movie but, eh, I needed another character and Kida was most prevalent in my mind as one of the Disney characters who I didn't need for another role in this story.

**Pippi's monstrous strength:** just in case there are people out there who aren't familiar with the Pippi Longstocking series, this is canon. Yes, Pippi does have monstrous strength and can lift a horse with one hand, even though she's just a little girl.


	14. The Lost Shop

**The Lost Shop**

Sixth District appeared before them as a large town square, just like every other district that Tidus had seen in the town. It was long like a street but the middle of the square was taken up by a long canal that was spanned by a few arch bridges and disappeared under a wall. At the far end of the square was a large, gothic mansion. The canal parted in front of its gate, forming a moat around its perimeter and disappearing from there into drains. The grates over those smaller branches of the canals were thin enough that the cart could be wheeled over them without getting stuck. The wrought iron gate, tipped with spikes, was left wide open and invited people into a well-kept garden that was illuminated with more of those wonky, black streetlamps that appeared frequently in Traverse Town.

The mansion was such an intimidating place. Tidus gulped when he looked up at it. It appeared to be something out of a horror movie with its tall, dark windows, gargoyles, spires and a large central tower with a clock near the top. A large sign hanging over the double doors of the main entrance read: 'the Lost Shop'. The doors were wide open but the interior didn't look inviting. Tidus and Miley glanced around apprehensively as Pippi wheeled the cart into the large doorway. It was dark with some occasional orbs of light from candle flames. The main foyer had been transformed into a shop front. The big square room had a tall statue of a rearing mare wearing boots and a mask like Ixion but it appeared to just be a regular horse. Tables and tiered shelves positioned around the statue and around the edge of the foyer were all cluttered up by various things. Placed around and between these tables and shelves were hat racks and coat racks with clothing and accessories hung on them. Items that were too large or too heavy to place on the shelves and tables were placed on the floor and along the wall on both of the staircases leading up to the balcony. That too was cluttered with tables, shelves and miscellaneous items. Everything had a paper price tag attached to it.

Tidus and Miley both jumped and the singer squealed when all of a sudden a bell chimed loudly throughout the room. The sound resonated in the walls and seemed to vibrate all the way through the building. Tidus looked around wildly for the source of the sound and found Kaze standing by a cluster of ropes. One of them was held tightly in his hand.

"What'd you do that for?" Tidus hissed at him. Kaze just raised an eyebrow.

"That's what we're supposed to do!" Pippi giggled. "We have to let somebody know we're here."

A dark cackle echoed around the mansion, making Tidus stiffen and hold his sword up defensively. Miley squealed and dropped the handle of the wagon to cower behind him. "Who has entered my shop?" a croaky voice boomed.

"Uh, no one important," Miley answered meekly.

"We came from the Tinkerman's Hostel," Kida explained, looking around as if she might find the owner of the voice. "We have some objects to donate to your shop."

"I can see that!" the voice snapped. A wild wind swept through the room and Tidus' jaw dropped when he saw colourful, shimmering glitter and light swirl with it. The glitter engulfed the cargo they were carrying and the boxes flew out of the cart and piled up on the floor by magic. "Will that be all?"

"For now, yeah," Pippi said. "We've got another cartful to deliver, so we'll be back soon."

"Um, you don't need the extra wagon, do you?" Miley gulped.

"I don't think so," Pippi said with a shake of her head.

"Then can I just stay here and help move all of this stuff?"

"You might not be safe here," Kaze warned. "Unlike the Gizmo Shop, the doors of this establishment are always open to its customers… and to the Heartless."

Miley squeaked and quickly clapped her hands over her mouth. Her wide eyes darted left, right, up and down, searching frantically for any hiding Shadows. Tidus gripped his sword tighter and looked backwards and forwards, daring the Heartless to get anywhere near them. Kida rolled her eyes at the two of them.

"Relax," she said. "This place is as safe as any other in Traverse Town, even our hostel, and we are not vulnerable in a group like this. Even the mindless shadow monsters would think twice."

"Surely the shop has its own staff to do the heavy lifting," Pippi reasoned.

"Maybe if she's not needed again Miley can stay back when you get the rest of the stuff," Tidus suggested.

"It's unlikely that Madame Ebony would let her get away with a job half done," said Pippi.

Tidus gave Miley and apologetic look and shrugged. "Well, I guess the best thing is just to go back to the hostel and finish the job, since we're no help here."

"How do you know? Do you see any staff around here right now?" Miley argued, lifting her hands and gesturing around the large room they were in. "Has anyone _ever_ seen any staff around here?"

"Well, to be honest, no," Pippi admitted, scratching her cheek with one finger.

Now the whole group was looking around the shop curiously. Tidus walked around the tight corridor between the tables, shelves and items, only able to go left since their boxes were blocking the other path. The shop clearly had more donators than customers, a fact that made Tidus' heart sink even more than it already had. A brief bit of movement caught his eye. He suddenly stopped, lifted his sword and turned to the central table to his right. He thought it might be a Heartless since he only caught a glimpse in the wavering shadows but there was none to be found. Instead, his eyes fell on a collection of small ceramic bowls with very colourful and ancient-looking patterns. One of them was turned upside down and the others were stacked on each other. That little upside down bowl moved a little to the left. Keeping his sword ready, Tidus took hold of the bowl with his fingertips, ready to slash just in case a very small variety of Heartless popped out but when he lifted the bowl there was no Heartless to be found, just a small girl slumped on the wood.

Small was perhaps an understatement; she was miniscule. Tidus thought she could have been no bigger than his thumb. She wore a blue ballerina length skirt, a short-sleeved white blouse, black slippers and a black corset that was laced up loosely. She got to her feet and shook the wrinkles out of her skirt. Her golden blonde hair was almost as long as she was tall, even though she wore it in a high ponytail. She breathed a heavy sigh of relief when she finished straightening herself out and looked up to see who had freed her.

"Oh, thank goodness! Thank-you for saving me," she called up, cupping her hands around her mouth. Even then, Tidus could only hear her little voice as a small squeak but the words were still audible.

"Whoa! You're tiny," Tidus said, putting the bowl down beside her and leaning in to get a closer look.

She rolled her eyes. "Yeah, I know. I was in a real pickle there. Last time I got stuck inside one of the objects around here it was days before someone managed to find me."

"You must have been pretty hungry," Pippi piped up, sidling up to Tidus and looking down at the little blonde girl. "You're so small! How did you get so tiny?"

"I was born inside the petals of a blooming flower," the tiny girl replied. "Anyway, welcome to the Lost Shop. I'm Thumbelina. Do you need help finding anything or are you alright to just browse for now?"

"You work here? Seriously?" Tidus exclaimed. The air from his lungs, though insignificant to anyone else, was like a gust to Thumbelina that kicked up her skirt and caused her to teeter. "Oops, sorry."

"Oh no, that's quite alright. It happens all the time," Thumbelina said, getting her balance back.

"We're kinda working too," Pippi explained. "We came to drop off some stuff that a few people left behind. We have another cartload to bring over, so we'll be going. We'll be back in two hours."

"Really? Where is this stuff?" Thumbelina asked, standing on her toes and trying to see over all of the miscellaneous items around her.

"Let me help you up," Tidus offered, holding his hand out and letting her climb into his palm. He lifted her over the items on display so that she could survey the store she helped run. She covered her mouth and gasped when she saw the pile of boxes clogging up one aisle of the shop.

"That's a lot of stuff," she said with a dismal sigh at the end. "And there's more?"

"A whole other cart piled high," Pippi replied, sounding a lot happier than Tidus thought was appropriate for Thumbelina's reaction.

"It'll take Chihiro and I days to sort through all of this on top of all of the other things that were left unfinished when everyone suddenly disappeared yesterday."

"You were badly hit by the swarm too, huh?" Tidus guessed.

Thumbelina nodded. "Luckily, I fell into a bottle in the mayhem and the shadow creatures didn't find me. We used to have plenty more people working here but after yesterday there's now only two. Even the store manager is gone. Ooh… we have our work cut out for us."

"You know, we were talking before and we don't think we need all of us to go back to the hostel for the next cartload," Tidus said. "Maybe a couple of us can stay behind and help you catch up on your work."

"I couldn't ask you to do that!"

"You don't have to, we're offering." Tidus smiled at the little girl, which prompted her to smile back.

"You're too kind, really you are."

"See? Now you can stay here with me, Miley." Tidus turned to the singer and beamed.

"Alrighty then," Pippi agreed, going back to the cart and lifting the bar to wheel it out again. "We should get going. And I'll bring back some snacks for you guys."

"I will also ask Madame Ebony if she would save some dinner for all of us, just in case we're not all back by dinnertime," Kida added. Pippi and Miley gawked at her in surprise.

"Really? You'd do that?" Miley said. "That's really sweet."

"We must come together in times of great stress," Kida simply said, looking down at the floor, "not just in our community but with all people."

"I appreciate your kindness, I really do," said Thumbelina. "I feel like I should be the one trying to help you, since you saved me from that bowl. And you all have your own work to do. I don't think I'll ever be able to repay such a huge debt."

"We're not charging for this," Tidus told her, setting her down near the bowls again. "We're volunteering."

"Tell us what we need to do and we'll do it to the best of our ability," Miley said.

"There's so much to do…" Thumbelina sighed hopelessly, "but let's start with those boxes. I don't think it would make a good impression if a customer came in and there were all of those boxes lying in their path."

Pippi, Kida and Kaze bid them goodbye as they began their long trek back to the Tinkerman's Hostel. Meanwhile, Tidus and Miley rolled up their sleeves and began the arduous task of unstacking, unpacking and then finding room for the lost belongings.

* * *

**Sorry for taking 4 months to get this out. Reviewing will make me faster - I'm not saying this to pressure you. I've been carefully observing my performance in writing in the past few months and I have found that the stories that got reviewed most frequently got updated most frequently. So please review!**

**P.S. to GuyIncognito: your encouragement was wonderful. I finished this chapter for you.  
**

**Glossary: **

**Thumbelina:** Based on the characters from the Hans Christen Anderson fairytale of the same name, there are a lot of studios that have appropriated this story into film and none of them do it any differently, except with regards to the appearance of the characters. Even Disney has done a version or two of Thumbelina. However, the Thumbelina described in this chapter is not Disney's version but actually Don Bluth's version, since she's the one I like the best.


	15. Light Up the Shadows!

**Light Up the Shadows!**

The hardest part of the task was finding space for all of the things. The Lost Shop was already so cluttered, despite the shop extending into nearly every room in the mansion. There was hardly any room for anything new. The most troublesome thing was trying to make sense of the sorting system that Thumbelina explained was made up by the owner of the store. The owner was very particular about her system and even though it made absolutely no sense to anyone, if anything was out of place the staff would definitely be punished. By the time the other three returned, they still hadn't finished half of the original pile. Kida carried some plastic boxes full of small sandwiches and juice boxes, which Tidus was grateful for. The hard work had made them all terribly hungry and thirsty. Madame Ebony had even kindly provided tiny sandwiches and a juice bottle as small as a shot glass and while even they were much too big for Thumbelina to manage she was thrilled that the hostel manager was so thoughtful and generous.

Pippi, Kida and Kaze remained throughout the rest of the afternoon to help sort items. Pippi was especially frustrated with the sorting system. Tidus had a box of books in one of the hallways branching away from the foyer and he could hear an argument between Miley and Pippi downstairs:

"You can't put that there," Miley said.

"Why not?"

"Because it's out of place. It's really advanced so it needs to go in the advanced technology section in the back rooms, in the hallway between the lasers and the telecommunications devices, next to the laser pens and on the same shelf as holographic devices."

"Why? It's a phone! See? There are phones here, why can't I just leave it here?"

"Look, though! It's got a touch screen and it makes 3D stuff pop out. These are all old phones."

"But that's a new phone and it looks pretty advanced to me."

"But that phone is… I think… maybe the only difference between that phone and all of the others is that it's shinier?"

"See, you can't tell the difference either."

"Okay, maybe I can't but the owner definitely will and Thumbelina is probably going to be the one who gets in trouble for it. Can you deal with that guilt? I know I can't."

Tidus rolled his eyes as he sorted the books into stacks that was dictate where he needed to put them. The system was too complicated, especially when it came to books. When he was done he had twelve small piles of only two to five books. With a sigh, he picked up one of the two book piles and headed down to a room at the end of the hallway. Just as he reached the tall door and was about to enter he heard a yell and a waterfall of thuds and crashes like a whole shelf's worth of books had come crashing down. He didn't think, he yanked the door open, dropped his books and pulled his sword out of his belt.

The room was tall and octagonal. It was very dark, lit only by the candles around the room. Opposite the door was a large, tall stained glass window topped with a rose window that lost most of its effect due to the fact that it was dark outside. Every other wall was lined with bookshelves as high as the ceiling. In the middle of the room smaller bookshelves (that were only just a little taller than Tidus) were placed more or less haphazardly. They were all of the same height but of a variety of different styles, materials and colours as if they'd been bought from an opportunity store.

Tidus kept his ears and eyes peeled for any sign of trouble. A quiet moan echoed up to the domed ceiling accompanied by a shuffle and a flicker of darkness. Tidus leaped into action, jumping up onto the short shelves. He jumped from one to the other until he got to the other side of the room where he'd glimpsed the shadow. He flipped over the final bookshelf and pointed his sword at the supposed threat behind it. His eyes widened and blinked as his target shrieked.

There was no Heartless. The shadow was a trick of the light caused by flickering flames. Tidus blushed and put his sword away, rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly. "Whoops. Sorry, for scaring you there. I thought I saw a shadow monster or something."

"Oh… that's okay, then."

The little girl sitting on the floor in front of him let her shoulders slump when he explained himself. She was small and skinny – probably no older than ten – and wore a green and white t-shirt with pink shorts, both of which looked a size too big for her. Her socks and yellow shoes were stained with black soot as if she'd spent most of her time in them walking in fireplaces. The shelf behind her was empty since all of the books were strewn around her and piled on top of her. Her brown hair was tied up in a high ponytail that had become messy after she'd pulled her head out of the mess of books so she redid it. Tidus crouched down and helped to unbury her and gave her a hand to help her up. Once she was on her feet, she bowed deeply at the waist with her hands clasped in her lap.

"Thank-you for helping me."

"Yeah, well, those books looked pretty heavy. It would have taken you ages to get out of there yourself."

She nodded. "Yeah, thanks again. These bookshelves are a bit wobbly but Baba Yaga doesn't want to replace them because, you see, they're lost things too."

"Baba Yaga?"

"She's the store owner."

Tidus nodded. "Okay. I guess you're Chihiro, right?"

The little blinked at him and took a few wary steps backwards, almost tripping on the fallen books. "How did you know my name?"

"Thumbelina mentioned it earlier. You and her are the only two workers left here, aren't you?"

Chihiro looked down and nodded glumly. "It's really sad. Thumbelina and I had to work really late yesterday to clean up the messes after the shadow creatures came in here. The place was so empty and quiet. The book section is the last one that needs to be cleaned up but…" she looked around her feet, "I'm not doing a very good job."

"Hey, you're doing a great job. You cleaned this all up by yourself, right?" Tidus said, looking around at the neatly arranged books in the tall bookshelves. Chihiro nodded. "This probably would have taken me a week at best. Don't be down on yourself."

The little girl managed a small smile and nodded.

"You don't seem happy."

"I can't. My friends from the shop are all gone." Her lower lip wobbled and she scrunched up her eyes to hold her tears back.

Tidus stiffened. If there was one thing he definitely couldn't handle it was tears. "Whoa, whoa! There's no need to cry, seriously. Me and my friends came here to help you."

"Buh… buh…" Chihiro sobbed, "but…"

"Look, everyone else here has lost their friends too, you're not alone," Tidus said, putting a comforting hand on her shoulder. "Even me."

Chihiro scrubbed her face with her hands and looked up at Tidus. Big, fat tears were still rolling down her face and dust on her hands from cleaning the bookshelves all day had mixed with them and smeared her face.

"Just hope with all your heart and one day we'll find a way to make everything right again," Tidus told her what Alana had told him to believe from the beginning. "My friends volunteered to stay here and help you out, even though we didn't have to. We have our own jobs to do too but we're here anyway."

Chihiro swallowed thickly, still choked up with tears. "Th-thank-you."

"Okay, come on, no more crying. It isn't going to help. It especially isn't going to help put these books back in order."

Tidus crouched down at the base of the pile and started to pick up and sort books. Chihiro stared dumbly at him for a moment. She couldn't remember the last time someone had extended the hand of unconditional kindness to her so readily, especially when they didn't really know her. And she didn't know what to make of his promise. Would everything really be alright? Awkwardly, she got down on her knees and started to sort the books alongside Tidus. She still sniffed, sobbed and hiccoughed occasionally but she really tried her best to keep the tears down for now. This blond, older boy was hopeful even in the darkest of times and places. Perhaps she could be too.

* * *

The tinkermen and Lost Shop workers gathered in the foyer when all of the items had been properly sorted. According to the clocks, it was late afternoon. When asked if there was anything else – anything at all – Thumbelina insisted that the small group of volunteers had done enough and gone too far out of their way to help them.

"C'mon, be honest," Pippi told them. "We can spare another couple of hours before we _really _have to go back."

"Yeah," Miley agreed. "Need a small handy job done? We've got a couple of boys who can handle something like that… and Pippi."

"Oh, no, that's too kind," Thumbelina said, shaking her head. She was standing in Chihiro's palms and the little girl did her best to hold her up gingerly and with as little shaking and moving as possible.

"I believe that there is more we can do here," Kida piped up, making everyone turn to her. She was extremely quiet, preferring to move about busily and get things done, so anything she said attracted the attention of her co-workers simply because she said something. "Just by looking at this place I can see that you have so many big jobs to do. We will help with the lights, if you like."

"The lights?" Tidus said, cocking his head to the side. "What's wrong with the lights?"

"I thought the candles were part of the charm around here," Miley added.

"Didn't you notice?" Kaze asked. Everyone turned to him and couldn't help briefly giving him a wide-eyed look. Speaking was rarer for him than it was for Kida. He pointed to the ceiling. "Look up."

Pippi, Miley and Tidus all tilted their heads back. The candlelight wasn't bright enough to illuminate the entire room but after a moment of squinting they were starting to make out shapes of things on the ceiling. Namely, some light fixtures for electric lights.

"Lights? Are they broken?" Miley asked.

Thumbelina sighed and let her head and shoulders drop. "Yes, the lights have been broken for quite some time. We were always meaning to replace them."

"We never had any time," Chihiro explained. "The shop is usually really busy. A lot of people come here to see if their friends came here or if they can find their friends' stuff. When the lights starting going out, there were still so many people we needed to help. And everyone just kept saying: 'wait 'til later' or 'leave it until the business dies down a bit' but it didn't and in the end all of the lights went out. So we have to use candles."

"Sure we can help with this," Tidus blurted out before anyone could input anything else. "Just find us a ladder tall enough give us some bulbs. I'm pretty sure I saw a few ladders in the store somewhere."

There were plenty of ladders in the Lost Shop and many of them were tall enough for what they needed. There were also plenty of spare light bulbs in storage left over from the days when the daunting and tiring task of replacing the busted bulbs was always left until the tomorrow that never came. Chihiro went to find the switchboard and cut of electricity for the lighting. They split up into two groups in order to get the job done faster: Kaze, Kida and Thumbelina worked from the east wing to the west while Tidus, Miley and Pippi worked from the west wing to the east. They met somewhere in the middle after about an hour and a half of unscrewing and re-screwing light bulbs. Kaze's group was in a back room on the ground floor. Tidus' group was in the foyer.

Tidus was the one who got roped into doing most of the hard work. Whenever there was a room that was too tall for chairs and stepladders Tidus was made to climb a tall ladder with Pippi and Miley trying to keep it steady at the bottom. He didn't have a problem with heights but he thought he just might after this experience. Those girls weren't very good at working together and even something as simple and straightforward as holding a ladder still so that the person at the top didn't fall had to involve an argument. It was especially terrifying when they had finally reached the foyer. There were eight fixtures on the walls around the room that were easy enough to reach but the main light fixture was a chandelier light that needed several bulbs amongst some light-amplifying crystals suspended high above the floor. When Tidus had gotten to the top of the ladder, examined it and explained the situation to the girls, they decided that it would be more efficient to leave him at the top and move him around on the ladder. He protested but they assured him that there was no need to worry because he could "trust" them.

And this is what came of it:

"Pippi! Don't push so hard!"

"Move faster!"

"If we move faster he might fall off!"

"Not if you were helping me keep it steady!"

"I _am_ helping you-"

"Uh, guys," Tidus interrupted, "you just made me miss it."

"Whoops, sorry about that," Pippi said, tugging the ladder in the other direction. "Miley, pick it up more!"

"I'm trying! I'm not as strong as you! We need a count or something."

"We tried that before and you kept getting it wrong!"

"_I_ kept getting _wrong_? You're the one who was getting it wrong! You can't count!"

"I can count! And I can even do plutification!"

"That's _multipli_cation and thirteen _does not_ come after two!"

"I'm pretty sure it does!"

"No, it doesn't!"

All of the jerking and wobbling as the two girls fought about how to steady a ladder correctly made the task thrice as difficult as it should have been. Tidus had one leg looped over one of the rungs to keep himself from falling off while he tried to screw in the last light bulb without dropping it.

"Okay! I'm done!" Tidus called out, screwing the bulb in tight and twisting it back just a little. "You can let me down now. And stop fighting!"

"We weren't fighting," Miley replied indignantly.

"Actually, we kinda were."

"No we weren't!"

"Yes we were."

"No we weren't."

"Yes we were."

"It doesn't matter, I'm coming back down now," Tidus said with a shake of his head. He unhooked his leg and started his descent. He called out into the house: "Okay, Chihiro, my group's finished!"

There was a muffled noise that sounded like Chihiro's reply. The other group had probably finished too since Chihiro had started throwing all of the switches again. The lights in the foyer came on in a flash that dazzled everyone. The radiance of the new bulbs illuminated every corner of the room, giving everything a sharp definition of form and bathing the objects in vibrant palettes of colour that had been subdued by the dim candlelight. With no more room left in the shadows to hide, the Heartless suddenly leaped into the open.

* * *

**Glossary:**

**Chihiro:** The main character from Spirited Away, a Disney and Studio Ghibli collab movie. If you haven't seen it, go and see it. It isn't the grand east-meets-west-friendship-project that it was advertised as but it is a fantastic movie. I didn't take any liberties with her character here, so I hope she's IC.

**Rose window:** a round stained glass window made with small panels.

And yes, it is also canon that Pippi can't count.


	16. Ms De Vil

**Ms De Vil **

Miley screamed. Pippi pushed the ladder aside and balled her hands into fists, looking left and right for any Heartless reckless enough to charge her. Tidus hadn't finished climbing down the ladder. It tipped. Tidus instinctively wrapped his arms and legs around it, like he used to on the Islands when he climbed tall palm trees that swayed dangerously in the wind. The ladder landed against the wall with a loud clack and bowed. Tidus' heart leaped into his throat but the ladder didn't break. He shimmied down as fast as he could.

Their adversaries were mainly Soldiers but there were Shadows among them as well. The sound of gunshots in another room told them that the Heartless were in the other group's room too. A Soldier charged for the girls. Pippi punched it squarely in the face and sent it flying into a wall.

"Wow! You can actually hit them?" Miley exclaimed.

Pippi stared at her fist in wonder. "I'm surprised too. I thought that hitting them with your bare hands would make them suck you up or something. Usually hitting them with anything that isn't magic doesn't work. And I'm not a magical person, no sir-ee."

Tidus made it close to the bottom and swung off the ladder into the fray. He pulled his sword out of his belt and slashed down on a Shadow right in front of him, swinging back immediately to cut across its face. It was thrown back into another advancing Soldier and both tumbled to the floor. Behind him, Pippi punched another one and sent it flying into a ceramic vase. The vase shattered.

"Aw, man! How are we going to fight in here without breaking everything?" Tidus groaned, stabbing a Soldier through the visor, lifting it up and throwing it down. The blow was fatal enough to destroy it.

"I think breaking stuff is the least of our problems right now," Miley said, cowering behind Pippi, who had her fists up, daring any Heartless to get near.

Tidus stabbed another Shadow and flung it at two Soldiers that were charging at him simultaneously. The Shadow knocked them down and Tidus leaped to give the tangled trio an axe-swing. It took out the Shadow but not the Soldiers. Tidus had to backflip out of the way to avoid their claws when they scratched back and put his sword up to block when one of them charged him with its cyclone attack. The second one came at him with the same attack and he parried it with an uppercut that sent it flying into its teammate but also into a steep, neatly stacked pyramid of brass goblets. They both got back up to fight but he noticed that most of the Heartless were actually fleeing. Pippi knocked over some tall, wooden statues when she attacked the adversary trained on her. Tidus stabbed the two Soldiers in front of him and threw them up in the air. He threw his sword up after them and jumped, leaping off a ladder rung to get a bit more height. He passed the Soldiers in mid-air and they tried to get him but missed. He caught his sword and executed his signature backwards flip move on the way down, dispelling both of them. He landed on the floor in a crouch and turned around. Pippi punched a Soldier into the floor, destroying it. A Shadow managed to leap over her, going straight for Miley. The singer screamed and ducked. Tidus threw his sword like a javelin and speared the Shadow straight into the wall where it disappeared in a puff of smoke. None of the other Heartless were returning.

Tidus sighed and stood up, looking around for any more enemies. All three of them were panting heavily out of shock. Pippi swallowed thickly and turned to face Miley and Tidus.

"Wow… that was pretty scary," she said for lack of anything else to say. "I don't think I've ever seen the shadow monsters flee like that before."

"Maybe they were freaked out about what happened yesterday," Miley guessed. "I mean, do you have any idea what made them stop? Something horrible might have happened to them too. Not that I feel bad for them, they deserve it."

Tidus nodded. "Let's go and check to make sure everyone else is alright."

The girls nodded and followed him around the mountains of stuff to get to the doors at the back of the room. Tidus asked Miley and Pippi to go and find Kaze, Kida and Thumbelina while he searched for Chihiro, telling them to get everyone to meet in the foyer. They nodded and ran up the stairs while Tidus went through a door underneath the foyer's balcony.

The corridors and rooms down here were small and narrow, probably meant to be used as service spaces. However, they were also a part of the Lost Shop, mainly for small items. Tidus ran down the small corridors, calling out for Chihiro. There was no reply. He started to throw open doors and scream her name, hoping to find her inside but he was only ever met with more random lost things. After throwing open his fifteenth door he began to succumb to despair.

"No… it couldn't be… she can't have…" he muttered, willing himself not to cry. She was way too young and just like London she was another person he thought he could protect but couldn't.

Suddenly he heard a shuffle. He stiffened and held his sword at the ready. It was possible that there was still a stray Heartless or two roaming about the shop. He stepped away from the door he'd just opened and searched the empty corridor with his eyes. There was no movement, not even in the tiniest shadows between the skirting and the floorboards. He scanned every surface and corner he could see and then—there! He spotted a bright light underneath a wooden door between two rooms. It wasn't a normal light but at the same time, it clearly wasn't Heartless. He crept towards the door, looking back and forth just to be sure, before closing his fingers around the knob and turning it.

When the door swung open the first thing he saw was a complex array of switches and a large, red lever. Crouched at the bottom of this little cupboard was a little girl – Chihiro. Tidus sighed with relief and slumped to his knees, pulling her into a tight hug.

"Geez, Chihiro, you have no idea how worried we were about you. Did you see any Heartless around here?"

"There were lots," Chihiro replied, looking up at him with a smile that told him that she was definitely alright. She held up a glowing blue crystal. "But it's okay. Kida said I could borrow this, since I was going to be alone."

"I hope she's okay, then," Tidus said, standing up and giving Chihiro a hand to help her up. "Come on, everyone is going to meet up in the foyer. I think we did a pretty good job right?" Tidus grinned.

The little girl nodded. "It's already so much easier to see. This whole corridor used to be dark all the time."

* * *

She held his hand all the way back to the foyer. The rest of the group was waiting there, including Kida. Chihiro returned the necklace with the crystal pendant and bowed while thanking her. The shop felt different with all of the lights on. For one, Tidus could actually see everything that was on display, rather than all of the piles being indistinct blurs of various stuff that he couldn't quite identify. The group was gathered in front of the doors. Pippi wheeled the hostel's cart outside and turned it around the outside wall so that she could easily turn it towards the gate. It looked like everyone had decided that it was definitely time to leave. Tidus glanced at one of the many small clocks that were hung up on the wall. 6:50p.m. – yeah, it was definitely time to leave.

"I really can't say how grateful we are," Thumbelina said. She was standing in Kaze's hand for the time being. "Working is going to be so much easier with the light."

"Should I get some money?" Chihiro asked.

"Money for what?" said Pippi.

"For the help. I feel like we shouldn't let you leave without giving you something in return." Chihiro held her hands out and Kaze passed Thumbelina on to her. The tiny girl jumped from his fingers into the little palms of her co-worker.

"We weren't doing this for payment," Kida told them. "We already have our own income."

"But that doesn't mean-" Thumbelina started.

"Nope, it's all cool," Miley said with a shrug. "Now, we've gotta get out of here. Madame Ebony is probably wondering where we are."

"And if we're okay," Tidus added, which earned some sheepish and wry expressions.

The sounds of tyres screeching and a revving engine reached their ears. Tidus turned his head to the open doors curiously, since he'd never heard any motorised vehicles in Traverse Town so far. The sound of an overworked motor was getting louder, making the other curious as well. At first Tidus wasn't sure exactly what he was seeing directly in front of him but it was getting closer extremely fast. Dangerously fast.

"Guys! Get out of the way!" Pippi screamed at them from outside.

Tidus backed up, as did everyone else. The approaching vehicle didn't show any signs of stopping, even as it zoomed through the gate directly to the front doors. Everyone screamed (except Kaze) and dived out of the way as the vehicle drove right into the shop and screeched to a halt, only just bumping the large, brass vase in front of it. The engine was so hot it was smoking. The vehicle was a red and black panther de ville with luxurious white wheels. The driver stepped out of the car and slammed the door shut, waltzing into the shop flamboyantly as if she believed she was royalty or something. The moment he saw her Tidus somehow knew that this woman was horrid. She was rail thin with a long, sallow face and high cheekbones. The thinness of her form was exaggerated by her long black dress, pantyhose and the enormous, fluffy fur coat that swamped her body. One side of her dishevelled hair was black and the other white. Her red high heels clacked obnoxiously, even through the old carpet of the Lost Shop, which was odd because she didn't seem to have any weight to her at all. Tidus decided that was a bad omen. He half expected her to have demonic claws underneath her red gloves.

She took a drag of her cigarette through her long cigarette holder and looked around the shop critically. She spied Tidus, sprawled on the floor and looking dumbstruck next to Miley and Chihiro, who both shuffled away as soon as they saw the scary witch of a woman looking at them. She sauntered up to Tidus and kicked him quite brutally in the shin. He hissed and clutched his lower leg.

"You there," she snapped, "get up. I've never seen such lazy staff." She took another drag and then looked down with what she probably thought was a sweet expression but Tidus thought it just looked evil. "I'm looking for something and I need you to tell me where I might find it."

"Um… I don't actually work here…"

"Just tell me!" she yelled, dropping her façade and scowling at him.

"Er… is it a lost thing?"

"Of course it's a lost thing, you buffoon. I wouldn't bother to come to a 'Lost Shop' if I wasn't looking for something that wasn't lost. Are you going to get up or not? On your feet!"

Tidus jumped and wobbled to his feet, still in shock from having nearly been run down by this crazy lady. "Okay, uh… what are you looking for, exactly?"

"Puppies," the woman replied. "Lost puppies. Ninety-nine of them, actually."

Miley, Thumbelina and Chihiro exchanged glances. They were all puzzled. "Ninety-nine puppies?" Miley mouthed to the actual Lost Shop staff. They both shrugged and shook their heads.

"Wow… that's a lot of puppies," Tidus said, swallowing thickly. He'd been pretty much all over the Lost Shop and he hadn't seen a single animal but it didn't look like this woman was going to take no for an answer. She'd just have to see for herself that they weren't here. "Erm, animal stuff is this way, I think…" he said, beginning to walk in the direction of a room that he remembered had pet collars and leashes. "So follow me, Miss… um…"

"De Vil, darling," she said, putting that creepy smile back on now that she was appeased. "Cruella De Vil."

Tidus just nodded and showed her where to go. As soon as he shown her to the room he remembered, he told her to let the staff know if there was anything she needed help with and absconded to the foyer once again. The tinkermen were more than happy to leave and even though Thumbelina and Chihiro waved to them with a smile he couldn't help but notice there was an undertone of dread on their faces. He was starting to feel awful about leaving them in the same building as that woman.

* * *

**Almost three months without an update but I'm back. Sorry about the laziness with the fight scene at the beginning.** I just got a bit antsy and wanted to move on.

**Glossary: **

**Panther de ville:** A luxury car manufactured in Britain in the seventies. It's the type of car that Cruella drives in 101 Dalmations.

**Cruella De Vil:** the villainess from 101 Dalmations and 102 Dalmations whose goal is to steal Dalmation puppies and turn them into fur coats. I shouldn't have to explain since she's such a popular character but I did because I recently met someone who had never seen The Little Mermaid before.


	17. Cruella

**Cruella**

"Oh man, that was a scary lady," Tidus muttered, walking along ahead of Pippi as she pulled the cart. Miley and Kida were hitching a ride in the back while Kaze brought up the rear. They were already deep within the urban cluster between sixth and fifth, about forty-five minutes away from their hostel. Tidus had waited until they'd turned two corners for fear that Cruella might be able to hear them across the district square.

"The worst part is that now you know who she is," Miley muttered. She shuddered. "Even knowing her is pretty unfortunate."

"But it sounds like you know her well," Tidus said.

"If you know her at all you know her too well," Pippi replied.

"Amen," Miley agreed. "Sadly, it's kinda hard not to know her."

"Is she famous?" asked Tidus.

"Try infamous," Kida said.

"The awfullest of awful people who were ever awful," Pippi added.

"Come on, she can't be that bad," Tidus said but he still looked over his shoulder apprehensively. "I mean, she looked kind of normal."

"Normal? Normal?!" Miley exclaimed, leaping out of the cart and landing right in front of Tidus. "Tidus, that woman ain't nothing like anything you've ever seen."

"What's she done to you that's so bad?"

"To us, personally? Nothing. And let's hope it stays that way."

"De Vil is often at the fore of many strange and unnerving things," Kida explained. "She is the head of a fashion company in this town that practises questionable morals, especially in regard to the fashion they sell. But she is responsible more than that. The food manufactory she owns claims to sell meat in a variety of exotic flavours and most people say that they get the flavours from the meat of strange animals, like kittens and bats."

"And rats!" Miley said. "They even wrote a song about her."

"Who did?" asked Tidus.

"Roger Radcliffe. How haven't you heard that song before?" Suddenly Miley gasped and grabbed Tidus by the shoulders. "Listen!"

Tidus tensed and looked around, unable to hear anything out of the ordinary. There was only the hum of electricity running through the streetlights and muffled music coming from some of the residences. Someone on the fifth floor of their apartment building opened the window and the jazz music became clearer. Miley lifted her finger to the instrumental sound.

"That's it! That's the intro of the song," Miley whispered. Tidus turned his gaze up to the window. It wasn't only coming from there; it was faintly coming from other residences too. There must have been a number of people tuned into the same radio station.

"_Cruella De Vil,"_ Miley sang, in time with the music. The lyrics were still too indistinct from the street.  
"_Cruella De Vil,  
If she doesn't scare you  
No evil thing will.  
To see her is to  
Take a sudden chill.  
Cruella, Cruella De Vil."_

Miley tugged on the cart, urging Pippi to keep moving.

"_The curl of her lips,  
The ice in her stare,  
All innocent children  
Had better beware.  
She's like a spider waiting  
For the kill.  
Look out for Cruella De Vil."_

She suddenly ducked and darted around Tidus, peeking over his shoulder like it was a hiding place.

"_At first you think  
Cruella is the devil  
But after time has worn  
Away the shock,  
You come to realise  
You've seen her kind of eyes  
Watching you from underneath a rock!"_

She jumped up so suddenly that it startled Tidus a little. He brushed his shoulder lamely to pretend that she had surprised him less than she really had.

"_The vampire bat,  
The inhuman beast.  
She oughta be locked up  
And never released.  
The world was such  
A wholesome place until  
Cruella, Cruella De Vil." _

The many radios in the district belted out the upbeat and strangely simultaneously sinister instrumental bridge. Tidus wasn't the type to think badly of someone without knowing much about them but he couldn't find it in himself to argue with the lyrics when he'd just met the woman.

"If she's so evil why is she looking for lost puppies?" he wondered aloud.

"She's probably gonna skin them to make a fur coat and then turn their meat into sausages," Pippi replied. Tidus wanted to believe she was joking but her tone was so matter-of-fact.

As they turned around a bend in the road they heard the sound of another motorised vehicle echoing off the buildings around them. This one didn't sound overworked and dangerous like Cruella's panther, it was a steady thrum from a smooth engine that was probably travelling at a reasonable speed too. The tinkermen came to an intersection at almost the same time as the vehicle in question did. Tidus gawked at it in astonishment. He'd seen a few machines like that at the Gizmo Shop but never in complete, working condition. It was a motorcycle with a sidecar attached, painted in navy blue and white and with bright white headlights. The riders looked like some sort of law enforcement since they were dressed in white shirts with navy blue trimmings and a badge mounted on the breast pocket. The driver was a tall, bulky man wearing riding pants. The passenger was a small woman wearing uniform shorts. They both wore a standard issue motorcycle helmet with stars on the side that indicated their rank.

The motorcycle stopped at the intersection and the driver lifted the visor of his helmet, even though that wasn't really necessary since it was untinted. "Excuse me," he said, sounding friendlier than the tinkermen had thought he would, "we're doing an investigation in the area. Do you folks mind if we ask you a few questions?" Tidus, Miley, Pippi and Kida all tensed. "We're not suspecting you for anything. We just need some information."

The tinkermen exchanged glances. "Er, sure," Tidus replied. "If we're not in trouble, then why not?"

"That's great. I'm Sergeant Steve Rogers and this is Constable Noel Vermillion. We've been investigating a number of break and entry crimes that occurred around the town in the past few weeks."

"Some people have been robbed," Noel added. "Have you seen any suspicious activity around the town?"

Tidus shook his head. "I haven't seen anything."

"The most suspicious thing I've seen in a while is Cruella De Vil," Miley said. To Tidus' surprise, the look the police officers gave her wasn't disapproving. Steve just rolled his eyes like he'd heard this all before but didn't have any opinions on it while Noel nodded in sympathy.

"What has been stolen?" Kida asked.

"Pets, mainly," Noel answered.

"Have you considered," Kaze suddenly piped up, "that in light of the Heartless storm last night, the perpetrators you are searching for may have already vanished?"

"It would serve them right for being thieves," said Pippi.

"Of course we considered that," Steve replied. "But we can't drop the case unless we can prove that that's happened. Until then, the investigation has to continue."

"Sorry we couldn't be of more help," Pippi said.

"That's quite alright. You kids just get home safe and have a nice night." Steve tipped his visor back down and restarted the engine. The motorcycle engine roared as they drove away into the narrow streets between Fifth and Sixth. The tinkermen exchanged glances again and shrugged, continuing on their way home.

* * *

**I'm sorry... that's all I can really say on the matter of not updating for like, 4 months. I have no adequate excuse. **

**Glossary: **

**Song:** _Cruella De Vil_, from 101 Dalmations. Total classic.

**Roger Radcliffe:** despite making no actual appearance, I should let you know that Roger is one of the owners of Pongo and Perdita in 101 Dalmations. He wrote the song in the movie.

**Stever Rogers:** he is Captain America. Yes, the superhero and yes this is totally cool and legal because as a result of corporate bullshit, Disney now owns part of Marvel, making the staff of the new Marvel movieverse Disney employees and the movieverse itself is now at least partly a Disney production.

**Noel Vermillion:** is from a fighting video game series called BlazBlue. What she does in the video game is of no concern here. It has no relation to Disney whatsoever but like Pippi and Anastasia, I like it so it's going in there... just randomly.


	18. Moving Machines

**Moving Machines**

The next day was just as depressing as the previous day. Tidus couldn't help but notice the small, sparse crowd heading up the steps on their way to work. At the check-in board most of the many white cards that had filled it up were now missing. Tidus placed his in its slot with a sigh and turned to start making his way to his workstation. He had just made it to the elevator when he was suddenly stopped by the foreman.

"Tidus, I need you to switch places today," Ivory said, getting straight to the point.

"Huh? Switch places? You mean like, work at someone else's workstation?" Tidus asked. "I still have stuff to do at my own."

"I am aware of that but employee numbers are down and we must stretch the work out among those who are left. Today I am transferring you to the Heavy Machinery Department. It is in the next room, I will show you." Foreman Ivory gestured for Tidus to follow him. They went through that door that led to the other side of the factory.

The section for large repairs was even more impressive during working hours than it was when Tidus had first seen it. There were people inside control boxes that worked the huge cranes and robotic arms. The tools were so much larger than the ones Tidus was used to working with at his station and almost all of them seemed to require electricity. Gears spun and pistons pumped in this brightly lit montage of moving parts. Tidus' jaw dropped. He was barely able to keep walking in a straight line as he kept up with Ivory's large strides and watched the machinations going on around him.

"Try not to be too impressed," the foreman said. "I need you to work here until I can find someone more suitable for the tasks required in this workspace. Ah, here is the man we need to see."

Tidus turned to see who the foreman had referred to. To Tidus' disappointment, he was probably the scrawniest man in the entire room. He had light brown hair and big, round glasses and everything he wore seemed to be just a little bit too big for him. He was working on the engine of an old, green truck. The vehicle was in terrible condition. The headlights were busted, the doors were missing and the bonnet was badly dented.

"Mr Thatch," Ivory said, getting the scrawny man's attention. "I have brought a tinkerman from the small repairs section to assist your work. Tidus, this is Milo Thatch. He is one of the senior repairmen in this department. He will tell you what jobs you need to work on and assign you tasks."

"It's a pleasure to meet you," Milo greeted, holding his hand out for Tidus to shake. Despite being quite skinny Tidus found that he had a vigorous handshake.

"_It is_," the foreman corrected.

"Oh! Sorry about that, sir. It won't—I mean, it _will not_ happen again."

"I admire your effort and work ethic, Mr Thatch. I know that there is still plenty of work to be done and not many tinkermen left to do it, so I shall leave you to it."

Ivory patted Milo on the back and turned to go back to his office. Milo took off his glasses and polished them on his shirt before replacing them and looking straight at his new workmate.

"So, Tidus, was it?"

"Yep, that's me."

"I'm guessing you have some experience working with machines."

"Not really…" Tidus admitted sheepishly.

"What? Foreman Ivory must have sent you down here for a reason."

"I've only been here for, what, a month or something? And I didn't even know how to fix a bike chain before I got here."

Milo looked thoughtful for a moment. Then he replied in a chipper voice: "well, okay, I can work with that. Just stick with me and don't be afraid to ask if you have any questions."

"Cool. Where do I start?"

"Right here. I've got this old truck that needs to be up and running by this afternoon. How good are you with electronics?"

Tidus stared at the broken headlights. One of them dismally slid out of its socket. The job would be more difficult than changing a light bulb, of that much he was sure.

* * *

The new headlights were not quite right for this particular model of truck, nor were they even a pair but when Milo got the motor running they came to life with everything else. However, once the engine got going the whole vehicle shuddered. Tidus kept a wary eye on his headlights, fearing that they would pop out due to his less than optimal workmanship. The truck powered down and nothing fell apart so Milo declared the job to be a success.

"Now we just have to move it to the pick-up station," he told Tidus. The boy nodded, assuming that the pick-up station was the Heavy Machinery's equivalent of the collection store. At the end of the day anything that was fixed in the small repairs section had to be taken down to the collection store where they would be passed off to their owners or the deliverer.

Milo disengaged the brakes and both tinkermen had to push the truck to the large garage where it would be picked up. Like everything in Heavy Machinery, it was much bigger than anything on Tidus' side of the shop. The ceiling was so high that someone might even be able to park an airplane inside it. There were designated places marked out on the floor for objects to be placed. There were many coloured lines all indicating different sizes of machines. The cavernous space between the floor and the ceiling echoed the sounds in the room in a strange distorted way. At the moment, none were louder than the sound of an irate man bickering with another tinkerman in the room.

"You said three o'clock in the afternoon! Well it's past three an' I'm here. Where the hell is my truck?"

"I told you that three would be the earliest. We can't guarantee exactly when a machine will be fixed."

"That's a load o' bollocks!"

Two men were standing in the middle of the garage with the poor employee who had to deal with them. The angry man was tall and thin while his companion was short and portly. They were dressed similarly in dark, dull clothes; trousers, a turtleneck sweater, a jacket and a cap. The short man looked was looking around the garage, only half-listening to the exchange going on right beside him. Suddenly he spied the truck and he tapped the tall man on the elbow.

"Hey, Jasper," he said.

"Shut up, Horace! I'm trying to set this idiot straight."

"But Jasper, it's our truck."

Jasper blinked and looked up. Tidus and Milo pushed it towards them. Their fellow employee looked relieved. Jasper glared at them and crossed his arms. "Well it's about bloody time! What the hell did you do it?!"

Milo and Tidus looked at each other. "We… fixed it?" Tidus replied.

"An' you couldn't even find a matching pair o' lamps?"

"Actually, we couldn't," Milo said. "Our stocks of spare parts are running low and you might have been waiting for weeks if we tried to find matching headlights."

"It ain't got the doors on it or anything," Jasper complained. "What kind o' con artist establishment are you running here?"

"We did say that we wouldn't be able to order any doors to fit this model of truck that would arrive within the time you were giving us to fix it," Milo explained. "We agreed that it would be fine to just repair the lights and anything under the bonnet."

Jasper harrumphed and stalked to the driver's side, shooing Milo out of the way. "Well all right then, you lazy buggers. You fixed all the moving bits, then. Good for you. Horace! We're getting out o' here."

The portly man jumped and hurried to get into the passenger's side as Jasper started the engine. He leaned out of his side of the truck to say: "You lot are lucky we ain't the ones paying you for this."

"Because we wouldn't," Horace added.

Jasper stepped his foot on the accelerator and the truck roared. It swerved a few times as Jasper tried to get control of a vehicle accelerating so fast and then sped out of the garage. The tyres squealed as it turned onto the road. Tidus watched them go, shaking his head with disbelief and disgust.

"Some people in this town are just…" he began.

"I know what you mean," said Milo.

* * *

**Sorry for such a boring chapter. The next chapter will have something more exciting happen, I promise.**

**Glossary: **

**Milo Thatch: **from Atlantis, like Kida. For the purposes of this story, just assume that the events of Atlantis haven't actually happened yet.

**Horace and Jasper Badun: **Cruella's henchmen in 101 Dalmatians.


	19. The Wyvern

**The Wyvern**

At the end of the week Tidus returned from a day's work covered in soot. Many of the tinkermen in Heavy Machinery had been put to work partially dismantling a steam engine. Working in the Heavy Machinery department wasn't as much work as the little repair jobs Tidus was doing before but it was a lot more labour intensive. Taking the train apart had taken them all day. The parts were heavy and most of them had to be lifted out of the way by a crane. The job left Tidus feeling tired and sore and all he really wanted to do was shower and eat a hot meal.

After his shower he dressed casually in dark blue overalls and a white shirt. As he was going down the stairs for dinner he was suddenly pounced on by an enthusiastic girl who covered his eyes with her hands.

"Hey!" he exclaimed with a smile. "Pippi, is that you?"

"What? No way!"

"Oh… Alana."

The hands disappeared and Alana circled around to appear in front of him. "Good to know that you can recognise my voice at least."

"What's up? Hey, do you remember what Madame Ebony is cooking for dinner tonight?" Tidus asked as they both continued walking down the stairs.

"Actually, I was going to ask if you wanted to go out for dinner," Alana replied.

"Uh, go out? Isn't that, y'know… dangerous?"

"It'll be a little dangerous to get there," Alana admitted. "But the place is in First District, so it's safe to hang around there. Besides, we already know you're pretty good with your sword. It's no big deal. Plus, I managed to snag this!"

Alana pulled a piece of paper out of her pocket and held it up right in front of Tidus' face, forcing him to stop and read it. It was a coupon for a restaurant giving the holder a two-for-one deal on any meal combo. Tidus furrowed his eyebrows, thinking that he should be seeing more but when he realised that that was all there was his eyebrows shot up to his hairline.

"Hey, wait! Is it just the two of us?"

"Yeah, why not? I couldn't get another one."

"But why me?"

"Why not you?" Alana countered, raising an eyebrow. "You're one of my best friends here. Kaze refused and so did Sjlk. Miley doesn't want to come if it's just the two of us. Can't really blame her for that."

"Oh, so you're just asking as a friend," Tidus clarified. Alana nodded. "Sure, I'll come along. Aw, but that means I have to go all the way back up the stairs to get my sword!"

"Take your time. The place doesn't even open for another hour. I'll wait for you down in the lobby."

Tidus turned to start jogging up the stairs while Alana continued on her way down. Suddenly Tidus stopped short and leaned over the balustrade to yell down. "Hang on, does going to First District mean that we have to go through Second?"

"That's the fastest way," Alana called back. "It's even shorter if you take a shortcut through the Gizmo Shop, which we can do since we work there and all. There are other ways we can go, through alleys and underground roads and whatnot but to be honest, they're not really safer. When it comes to the shadow monsters, I find that the less time you spend exposed to them, the better."

Tidus just swallowed thickly and nodded. He continued up the stairs, hoping that things had calmed down a lot since he last went to Second District.

* * *

When he finally got to the lobby, Alana was waiting for him by the front door. Most people were still in the middle of their dinner but some were floating around the room to socialise. Soul had taken up the piano and was playing something classical, probably at the request of the man who was leaning against the instrument. Tidus caught sight of Madame Ebony hurrying about as he crossed the room. Alana opened the door ahead of him and they both walked out into the endless night.

It was a warm, still night. Things seemed quieter than usual as Tidus and Alana made their way across the little square and up the stairs to the Gizmo Shop. It was quiet and dark inside. The hanging workshops looked like an eerie network of lines and shadows. In the Heavy Machinery department the partially dismantled steam engine sat heavily on the main conveyor belt like an industrial carcass. The special orders section was as empty and motionless as ever. It still hadn't been used at all since Tidus had last entered it. The room that came after it, however, seemed to be in a state of constant illumination. It was almost blindingly bright to Tidus and Alana, who had just stepped out of the dark. Alana was still ahead of him, so Tidus grabbed her by the arm and pulled her back to be just behind him. There were Heartless here, he remembered.

Alana giggled. "Tidus, if there are shadow creatures around, being behind you probably won't make much of a difference." Tidus made a noise of grim agreement.

This room felt very different now that the bellows were running. There was the quiet hiss and swish of air being pumped and the bird-shaped handles of the levers running them shone brightly, adding extra light to a room that was already fully illuminated.

"I wonder who got these started," Alana muttered as she and Tidus walked across the room warily. "Has someone else been through here?"

Though he had been through here before, Tidus had no idea who had activated the bellows. He and Alana made it through that section of the shop without a hitch and stepped through the doors into Second District proper. Tidus felt the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck prickle as the door swung shut behind them with a creak and a dull thud.

"Alana, wait!" he called to her. She turned around. She was already making her way down the steps leading towards the great wooden doors at the end of the square. "Something isn't right here."

"I know, it feels a little weird to me too," Alana replied. She jogged back up the stairs and grabbed Tidus by the wrist. "That means we should move faster. The quicker we get to First District, the better."

Tidus let her drag him down the steps and they both took off running. As they passed the hotel, Tidus turned to watch its doors and windows flash by and wondered if Mr Mosby was doing alright by himself. Suddenly he heard a scream from above. He stopped and looked up. It was difficult to see against the night but it looked like someone in black clothing was falling out of the sky. On impulse, Tidus turned and jumped into the square. Alana turned back, saw him leap and gasped.

"Tidus! Wait! What are you doing?"

Tidus dove to catch the falling figure's fall and they both tumbled over the cobblestones. He groaned, feeling the aches in places where bruises would later appear. He lifted himself up on his elbows to look at who he had saved, surprised to see a familiar flying witch.

"Kiki! Are you okay?" he asked, getting onto his knees and helping her sit up. She moaned, letting her head loll as Tidus pulled her up. She examined her broomstick first, ignoring Tidus while she made sure that it was still in working order. Then she replied:

"I'm okay, I think. Thanks for saving me." She gasped. "Oh no! We need to get out of here!"

Kiki scrambled to her feet and Tidus followed suit.

"Why? What happened?" he asked.

The answer also came from the sky. A beastly shriek and a strong gust of wind from powerful wings made everyone look up. A great, red dragon-like creature soared over Second District. It doubled back before getting to the doors of First and spread its wings to glide low over the square. Its glowing yellow eyes locked on Tidus and Kiki. It opened its jagged maw and shrieked at them as it swooped. Tidus pushed Kiki to the ground. The creature flew over them, kicking up a gusty wind as it passed. With a great flap of its ragged wings it took to the sky again and circled the square. Tidus stared at it in awe. It had the mark of the Heartless despite looking like none that Tidus had ever seen. Its massive legs looked like they could crush him effortlessly.

"W-what is that?" he stammered.

"I don't know. I was just going home and then it appeared out of nowhere and started chasing me. I couldn't shake it."

"Tidus!" Alana yelled across the square. Tidus turned to her and waved her away.

"Just keep running to First District! I'll meet you there!"

"But that thing-!"

"Run!"

Alana gulped. Her gaze snapped to the giant district doors and returned to Tidus. Slowly and with reservation she nodded and turned to run to the doors. Just as she passed the fountain two large dark portals opened up in front of her. She skidded to a halt. The new Heartless that appeared before her were huge and fearsome. They were large and apelike, clad in blue armour and they blocked the way with their shields raised. The blue, star-shaped shields had large, dog-like heads with long fangs and three glowing yellow eyes. They growled as if they had minds of their own. Alana backed away slowly. Her heart nearly leaped out of her chest when one of the Heartless was pulled forward by its own shield and the dog snapped at her.

Tidus glanced back and forth from the dragon to the apelike knights. He'd never seen either type before and they looked far stronger than the Soldiers, Shadows and even the Large Bodies that were usually common in the town. He looked up at the tailor's shop that Anya and Bartok worked at. The lower level was still illuminated but the second storey was dark. Hopefully that meant that Rothbart and Odile wouldn't be looking as he drew his sword.

* * *

**I would have liked to play an April Fool's joke, but it probably wouldn't have much effect.**


	20. Welcome to First District

**Welcome to First District**

The sword flashed and bubbled more than usual as Tidus pulled it out of its sheath. It only startled him for a moment and he pushed it to the back of his mind.

"Are you serious?!" Kiki exclaimed. "You want to fight them?"

"I don't see any other option. They're blocking the way," Tidus replied.

"But they're bigger than all of the others! What if you can't fight them?"

The dragon screeched and tucked in its wings to dive at Tidus and Kiki, spinning as it fell. One of the dog-faced shields opened its mouth and breathed a jet of fire. Alana rolled to the side and stayed low as the searing flames blew over her. Tidus grabbed Kiki by the arm and yanked her to the ground. The dragon Heartless' missed but still managed to buffet them, sending them tumbling over hard cobblestones. It spread its wings and climbed again, turning around to watch them cautiously. Tidus got to a kneeling position and observed it back. It didn't even hit and the attack still managed to hurt. Kiki scrambled to her feet and tugged on Tidus' sleeve.

"Get on my broom," she told him. "C'mon, hurry!"

Tidus got to his feet and followed Kiki as she ran to her broomstick. Almost as soon as she hopped on it the broom lifted into the air and hovered while she waited for Tidus to get on behind her.

"We need to help Alana first," Tidus insisted.

Kiki urged her broom forward and flew over the fountain. The two apelike Heartless had already sluggishly moved in on Alana and there was no room to squeeze in without being in danger. The dragon screeched at them and swooped. Kiki noticed it charging and ordered her broom to lift higher into the air. The attack missed and Tidus hoped it was going to crash into a building but it changed direction so fast and glided up the side of the building. As it went, Tidus leapt off the broom and down onto the Heartless crowding Alana, despite Kiki shrieking at him to wait. He held his sword up and barrel-rolled as he came down, hitting one of the Heartless heavily. The shield roared at the blow received by its wielder's head. Tidus ducked as the knight swung its heavy-set arm around to bludgeon him. The other Heartless got a clear shot. The knight lined up the shield and the dog head opened its mouth to blow a large stream of fire. Tidus didn't have enough time to dodge. He put his sword up as if to block, even though with an attack like that it was probably useless.

However, the flame hit the sword and dissipated in a cloud of steam. Tidus was dumbstruck, staring at the fire in front of him turning to gas as soon as it was in the range of his sword's power. The flame stopped flowing and Tidus' sword was left still steaming and bubbling violently like boiling water. The dog barked and shot an orb of ice magic at Tidus. Tidus parried it and the orb disappeared with a splash like melted ice. The growling behind him reminded Tidus that he had another opponent. He whirled around. The second Heartless had raised its arm to pound him down. Tidus darted in quickly and delivered an uppercut that sizzled and knocked the Heartless back. It groaned as it lost balance. The first Heartless' heavy steps gave it away as it lumbered towards him. Tidus' rolled out of the way before the dog's jaws could sink their teeth into him.

"Tidus! Grab me!" he heard Alana yell from above.

He looked up. Kiki was flying low and straight at him with Alana on the broom behind her. Tidus reached for Alana's outstretched hand and grabbed her in a monkey grip. His feet were suddenly lifted off the ground as Kiki climbed abruptly. The broomstick zoomed into the sky at a sharp angle and Tidus watched the entire town shrink beneath his feet. He looked up. She seemed to be aiming for the stars themselves.

"Kiki…" Alana huffed, already out of breath at such high altitude, "what are… where are you… going?"

"I'm flying higher," the witch answered. "The shadow monsters never follow me this high into the sky."

A vicious screech made Tidus look down. The dragon Heartless was pursuing them and it didn't look like it was going to stop. In fact, it looked like it was gaining on them. "Uh, Kiki, I don't think that's going to work this time!"

"Then I'll just go higher!"

Kiki leaned forward and squinted her eyes. The broom accelerated dramatically. Alana squeaked and tightened her hold around Kiki's waist. The dragon flapped its powerful wings some more to keep up. Unlike the Air Soldiers Tidus had seen before, it didn't slow down or back off, even as the atmosphere got thinner and thinner. Tidus was starting to pant heavily and he could feel Alana's grip on his arm get weaker. Her fingers twitched in the chilly air. The dragon kept coming.

"Kiki, this… this won't work," Tidus panted.

"We… we just have to get… high enough…" she said, sounding out of breath herself.

Tidus shook his head but she wasn't looking. They were more likely to die of oxygen deprivation at this rate. There was only one thing to do. Tidus twisted his wrist out of Alana's loose grip and freefell down to the advancing Heartless. He was vaguely aware of Alana screaming for him. The dragon opened its jaws in anticipation. Tidus flipped his still steaming hot sword around so that the hook faced outwards and forced himself to somersault backwards. Each full turn gained more speed until he was rolling down to meet the Heartless. The hook snagged its lower jaw and the blade ripped down the neck and belly of the beast, slicing its sigil in half. The dragon roared and tipped off course. It flapped mindlessly in one place, disoriented. Tidus briefly congratulated himself but another turn through the air made him realise that that wasn't really the best plan he could have come up with. Traverse Town was rushing up to meet him almost as fast as he had been dragged away from it. Tidus' gut felt stone cold and hollow as he fell. He felt completely weightless and was only able to watch in horror as he got close enough to see each tile on the rooves of buildings.

Suddenly he was snapped out of the sky so fast that he was left winded and dizzy. Alana had him by the strap of his overalls. Kiki flew over the rooves as fast as her broom would carry them. An angry screech warned Tidus that the dragon was still on their tail. Kiki looked behind them briefly and then dived into the forest of rooftops below them. The Heartless tried to follow them. The world tipped and turned and flashed by so fast that it seemed to be a blur as Kiki dodged chimneys, looped around spires, weather vanes and antennas and ducked into narrow openings between buildings. Tidus looked down between his feet, trailing behind them like a tail. The great, red beast was following as best it could but it was falling behind as it toppled chimneys and weather vanes and scraped tiles off rooves with its massive wings. Kiki pulled up tightly when a larger building suddenly appeared in front of them. The dragon pulled up with them and spread its wings. It was now in prime position to charge them. Kiki rode the broomstick over the eaves and along the slope, looking behind them to check their pursuer. To her surprise, the dragon sailed past them, looped in mid-air and doubled back.

She kept her eye on the Heartless a bit too long and didn't watch her path. Her broom flew too low over the ridge. Kiki and Alana each had a knee banged into the roof ridge, tripping up the whole party. The impact tore out a couple of tiles and some of the broom's bristles. The three of them tumbled down the other side of the roof. Kiki kicked off and tried to get her broom flying again but in her panic the broom bucked violently and sent all three of its riders soaring in a wide arc. The next thing any of them knew, they were freefalling to meet brown cobblestones.

At the last moment, Kiki gathered enough wits to spread her arms and cast one of the few witch spells she knew. The three of them suddenly halted in mid-air and hovered. Tidus stared at the stones only a few inches below him, breathing hard and with adrenalin pumping through his veins. His heart was pounding in his ears but the rapid beat eased when he realised that he wasn't in danger anymore. Halfway through a sigh of relief, the spell wore off and Tidus, Alana and Kiki dropped face-first onto the ground.

Kiki was the first to move, pushing herself into a sitting position. Alana crawled to her feet and groaned. Tidus rolled onto his back while he tried to catch his breath. He looked up at the starry sky above him. It was clear of everything from clouds to shadow monsters and he could see a building with a bright, yellow sign glaring out into the well-lit area they had landed in. He sat up and turned to check on the two girls. Kiki was preoccupied with making sure her broom wasn't broken while Alana was bending over with her trouser-leg lifted over her knee, examining the red mark that was quickly turning dark.

"Are you girls okay?" he asked, standing up and looking straight at Alana. "How's your knee?"

She bent it a few times to test and straightened up with a smile. "It'll be okay. It'll be one hell of a bruise but it isn't broken. I should still be able to walk."

"What about you, Kiki?"

The little witch looked up upon hearing her name. She gave her broom another quick once-over before standing up as well. "I'm alright. My broom isn't in the best shape it could be in but it'll still be able to fly me back home."

"Do you think you should risk it?" Alana asked.

"I haven't really got a choice," Kiki sighed. "Even if the shadows are more powerful, life goes on in this town. I've got to make deliveries and manage the business, so I need to go home."

"I suppose. We're the same," Alana said, nodding at Tidus. The blond acquiesced grimly.

"Where did we land anyway?" he interjected, looking around the new square. He walked up to the top of a set of steps leading down to a plaza with two wonky lampposts in the middle. The lamppost beside the stairs had a pair of gloved hands, one pointing to the left and the other down to the plaza. There were two sets of large doors, one on the other side of the square and one to the left of the square. To the right of the square was a restaurant with some outdoor tables lit by candles.

"Oh, wow! What a stroke of luck!" Alana exclaimed, running up to stand beside Tidus and gaze over the square as if it was the most magnificent thing she had ever seen. "Tidus, welcome to the only truly safe place in Traverse Town: First District."

* * *

**Originally, this was just supposed to be Adventure #3, but it's kinda merged with Adventure #4. Oh well, we'll just see how this plays out. **


	21. Peaches and Silk

**Peaches and Silk**

Tidus looked around the district. He had imagined that the place was a lot more spectacular that it actually turned out to be. It was a bit busy and that's what struck Tidus the most. He'd never seen so many people out in the open in Traverse Town before. The square wasn't too crowded but then again, the population of the town had dropped dramatically a week ago. It was a Friday night so people seemed to be getting out and about.

"Whoa, look at all these people!"

"This is a pretty big shopping district," Alana explained. "The shop right behind us is an awesome place to buy jewellery and accessories. There's also a really good item shop and a synthesis shop. Not to mention, it's safe."

"Yeah, I know," Tidus said. "Everyone keeps going on about how safe it is here. I guess it's really true. That dragon thing didn't try to follow us in here. I wonder why."

"Nobody knows," Kiki piped up. "It's just a weird quirk of First District, I guess. Anyway, I'd better get home. I hope you two have fun here."

"Hey, you don't really want to get back up there straight after what just happened, do you?" Tidus asked.

"Not really. I'm still feeling jittery all over," Kiki replied, hugging herself and squirming a bit. "But I need to go home and get some dinner."

"We were just on our way to go out for dinner. Why don't you hang out with us?" Tidus offered.

"But I only have one coupon," Alana said.

"I can pay for myself," Kiki told them. She looked down at the floor as she considered it. "Well… I haven't really gone out very much since I got here. I'd love to! I kind of need to take my mind off Jiji for a while too."

"Jiji? That's your cat, right?" Tidus said. Kiki nodded. "What happened to him?"

"I'm not sure. He hasn't come home for five days. I think someone kidnapped him."

"Are you sure he didn't just run away?" Tidus inquired.

"Jiji wouldn't run away!" Kiki protested. "I've been putting up posters for him all over town after work every day. I hope someone finds him soon. I'm really worried."

"Sorry about your cat," Alana said sympathetically, giving Kiki a hug. "We've lost some friends at the Tinkerman's Hostel too. Let's go and have some fun here, okay?"

Kiki nodded and the three of them started to make their way down the steps to get to the restaurant.

* * *

Inside the restaurant was very brightly lit but all of the lights sat in orange stained-glass lamps, giving the interior an orangey ambience. It reminded Tidus both fondly and sadly of the tropical sunsets he used to see every day at home. There were round tables all throughout the restaurant and each one had its own candle, even indoors where it wasn't necessary. Tidus spotted a couple of children at a table taking turns trying to blow the flames out but the candles just relit themselves. It was a quirky touch but Tidus had come to expect strange things like that happening in Traverse Town. What threw him about the place (although really, he should have probably expected something like this too) was that some of the staff appeared to be giant insects. There was a small stage in one corner where live music was being played on a violin by a huge grasshopper wearing a tailcoat and pinstriped trousers. A huge centipede crawled around the floor and popped up at tables to take orders while a spider dressed in very fashionable black clothing dropped down from the ceiling on a thread of silk to do the same.

"Welcome!"

Tidus turned to the source of the sudden greeting. A boy – who was definitely younger than him but he wasn't sure by how many years – was standing in front of them. He was average in every sense of the word but he was dressed up in a peach-coloured dress shirt and an apron.

"I'm James, I'll be your waiter for tonight. Would you like a table for three?" the boy continued.

"If it isn't any trouble," Alana replied.

"The only three-seaters available right now are outside. Is that okay?"

Alana glanced at her companions. Tidus shrugged. "Sure, why not? I want a good look at First District anyway."

James chaperoned them to the outdoor tables and handed out menus. "Sorry the maître d' couldn't make it out here. She's sort of busy right now."

"We weren't complaining," Kiki told him. "And you're doing a good job so far."

"Really? Thanks!"

"Hey, how old are you anyway?" Tidus asked.

"I'm seven and a half."

"Aren't you too young to be working at a restaurant?" Alana asked.

"Miss Spider said it was okay if I only do nights when school isn't on," James argued. "I'm fine for it, really, I am. I want to help out my friends here and save enough money to buy our own Gummi Ship."

"Gummi Ship?" Tidus echoed, cocking his head to the side.

"You should have seen a few in your new workplace," Alana said. "They get quite a lot of them in."

"Not this week, apparently," Tidus replied.

"It's a type of spaceship," James explained. "And with it, we're gonna blast off into outer space and find our world again."

"Do you think it still even exists?" Kiki asked, looking down dismally at the placemat in front of her.

"There's only one way to find out," James said. "But for now, I'll just get you some water."

Tidus flipped open his menu as James ran back inside to fetch the pre-meal drinks. He raised an eyebrow as his perused his options. There was nothing on the menu that didn't come with peaches of some sort. There was peach juice, peach salad, peach sauce, peach marmalade, peach garnish, peach champagne, peach wine, peach pasta, peach stew, peach cider, peach curry, peach pancakes, peach bread, peach dip, peach cookies, peach mousse; everything had peaches.

"Wow… they take the theme really seriously," Tidus muttered. He looked at the header of the menu and squinted as he tried to decipher actual letters from the curly, kinked text of the restaurant's title. "'The Giant Peach'… huh. Do you think that's code for something?"

"Who knows. But it looks like an interesting menu," Alana said. "I wonder what a steak cooked with peach marinade tastes like."

While the three of them tried to decide what they'd prefer, Tidus suddenly heard a sound; a mechanical rumbling that caused his blood to run cold. Tidus was now used to hearing the sound of engines running in the Heavy Machinery Department but this particular engine he'd only heard once and the experience afterwards had not been the least bit pleasant. The sudden screech of tires alerted the whole table (and the entire square) of an approaching reckless driver. People scrambled to clear the square ahead of time as a red and black panther de ville screamed around a corner and drifted to a halt in front of the restaurant, almost tipping over with the force of braking. Tidus, Alana and Kiki had all jumped out of their seats and backed up all the way to the wall just in case the car didn't stop in time. Tidus gulped. There was no forgetting that vehicle or the vile woman who drove it.

Sure enough, when the driver's door opened it was Cruella De Vil who stepped out. This time she was wearing a stunning ensemble of designer stilettos and patterned pantyhose with a white silk dress, a fashionable hat with a lace veil and red opera gloves. They were a different kind of red from before and that made Tidus slightly suspicious. Of course, no appearance from Cruella would be complete without the ostentatious fur coat, this time in black. She pulled out her cigarette holder and lit up with a zippo clad in real ivory as she proudly sauntered up to the restaurant. Tidus gulped and prayed she wouldn't look up. Unfortunately, she did as soon as she snapped her zippo shut. She grinned, seeing the three teens backed up against the wall. Instead of going straight to her destination, she walked right up to the trio. They all blanched.

"Why hello, little darlings," she grinned. All three wanted to vomit. "What a lucky boy you are – having a date with two cute little girls at once." She waved her cigarette around, pointing to Tidus, then Kiki and then to Alana and spreading the smoke everywhere. Tidus tried not to breathe it in. "Now haven't I seen you somewhere before? Oh! That's right. You work at the icky second hand shop, don't you?"

"It's called the Lost Shop," Tidus corrected.

"He doesn't work there, he works at the Gizmo Shop with me," Alana retorted, glaring at Cruella. Tidus turned to her, thinking he heard a hint of protectiveness in her tone. "He was sent to the Lost Shop on an errand last week."

"Oh my, what fiery little attitude you have there," Cruella snarled at her. She turned to Tidus, stroking his cheek with her gloved hand. He realised with disgust that the gloves were made of fur – _real_ fur – and were so soft… too soft to have come from an adult animal. "Don't get too serious with her. They're the worst type, believe me."

With that statement she strode off and threw open the door of The Giant Peach. The three of them sighed and fanned away the rest of the smoke with their hands.

"I don't know what's worse, the fact that she's here at all or the fact that she thinks she can give dating advice," Alana muttered.

"We're not even on a date," Tidus added. "Can't a guy hang out with a couple of girls as friends? Come on!"

"I wonder what she's even here for," Kiki said.

The three of them exchanged a glance before unanimously deciding to poke their heads into the restaurant and peek through the gap between the door and its frame. Cruella strode up to the counter just as James was coming back carrying a serving tray with three stacked cups and a bottle of water. When he saw Cruella he almost tripped over his own feet and fumbled with the tray. Fortunately he managed to balance before anything tipped over.

"Good evening, madam," he welcomed her nervously. "I'll be with you sho-"

"Where's the giant spider?" Cruella snapped, taking a long drag of her cigarette and then tapping the ashes into the top cup of the stack. James gaped at the action.

"Um… d-do you mean Miss Spider?"

"Yes! The spider!" she yelled, loud enough to get the whole restaurant's attention. Even the music stopped. "The only giant spider around here or do you have an infestation of them?"

"I assure you we have no such dilemma," said a sultry, womanly voice with a thick French accent. The spider in black that Tidus had seen before lowered herself on a thread of her own silk until her heeled boots hit the floor with a soft click. "But what is it that you want this time, Ms de Vil? Can't you see that the restaurant is quite busy? Unless you would like to be served, then by all means, allow me to show you to the door."

Tidus, Alana and Kiki cringed but couldn't keep the smiles off their faces at the spider's sass. Cruella's lip curled over her teeth.

"You know exactly what I'm after," she hissed. "No more excuses, no more delays; I want this business finished tonight."

"I've already told you what I think of your 'business': I want no part of it. This restaurant is not just our livelihood it is our home for the time being. I will not sell and I most certainly _will not_ have our home and reputation sullied by doing business with you."

"Oh, please! You make it sound like such a raw deal when it's actually rather generous," Cruella said in her most congenial voice, which only sounded wicked and condescending. "You can do business with my company or you can sell and I'll offer you a job in my company's fashion department. You would be a wonderful silk weaver, dear."

"Ha! A silk weaver?! Why don't you just be honest and say what you really want from me. You want me to spin my silk into thread and fabric in your little sweatshop. I'm sorry but these goods are not for sale." Miss Spider began to crawl back up the thread she spun down on, signalling that she would like the conversation to be over. "Now please leave, mademoiselle, and never foul up the atmosphere in my establishment with your presence again."

Cruella growled. "Very well, so be it. But mark my words, insect, this isn't over!"

Miss Spider huffed. "Spiders are arachnids!"

Cruella turned on her heel and stormed out of the restaurant. Tidus, Alana and Kiki all gasped and dashed back to their seats on their table before Cruella could make it to the door. As she passed them on the way to her car, Tidus noticed the many tails on the train of her coat and realised that they were the still attached tails of the creatures that had been sewn together to make it.

* * *

**Sorry for taking months to upload. I've had some problems lately. And omg, Cruella, why do you have to be such an awful person? It's actually difficult to write icky people without making yourself sick. **

**Glossary: **

**James and Miss Spider:** are from James and the Giant Peach, the Disney film adaption of Roald Dahl's children's novel. The film is very different to the novel but I actually prefer it. It's weirder and more gothic.


	22. Catnappers!

**Catnappers!**

Dinner at The Giant Peach was almost over and Tidus certainly did not regret taking Alana up on the offer. The restaurant's speciality peach-flavoured food was surprisingly tasty and the small group was currently finishing off the two peach parfaits that they were entitled to on Alana's coupon. Alana and Kiki shared one between the two of them and let Tidus have one all to himself since he could eat like a horse. He finished his own meal with the sides and the sides from their meals that they couldn't finish.

"I guess working in large repairs now really makes you work up an appetite," Alana giggled, spooning more parfait into her mouth. "I haven't seen you eat that much before and you eat a lot."

"Do I really?" Tidus asked, tipping back the last dregs of partially melted cream and ice cream. He licked his lips and looked around the district again. Things hadn't slowed down since the three of them had arrived. In fact, the district seemed to have gotten busier. Every now and again Tidus would get a prickle on the back of his neck or feel a chill and turn around expecting to find Heartless but there were never any. Not having to be paranoid to survive in this district was a weird but welcome feeling.

"Bonsoir again, darlings," said a now familiar voice. Tidus looked up, no longer surprised to see the huge black and white spider dropping down to their table. James had been sent to bed a while back and Miss Spider had been waiting their table ever since, spinning a web across the ceiling. Rather than use the same route over and over again she would add a little more each time she came, making her creation more and more complicated as the night wore on. She dropped a tray on the table and passed them the bill on a little saucer before collecting empty glasses. "I hope your visit to my restaurant was to your liking."

"It sure was," Kiki replied.

She pulled a small purse out of a barely-visible pocket in her robe and began counting out what she owed for the meal. Alana and Tidus went halves and Alana dropped her voucher on top. Miss Spider collected it all and positioned it carefully for the trip back up.

"I've always wanted a good reason to come here," Alana said. "Now I know why everyone tells me such great things about this place."

"I will pass your compliments on to my friends inside," Miss Spider nodded with a smile. "They will be pleased to hear the praise."

Tidus' gaze had flickered out into the square and fell onto the unsightly tyre tracks Cruella had left behind when she sped away. "Hey, I've been meaning to tell you," he said, "that it was pretty cool seeing you mouth off at De Vil like that."

"She's not as scary as everyone makes her out to be," Miss Spider dismissed, "just a wealthy, spoilt brat who wants to command the world with her money. Her only motivations are her greed and her vanity."

"Sounds like someone else I know," Tidus murmured. His eyes flickered down to the sword on his belt.

"What's that?" Alana asked. "Are you talking about someone from your world?"

"Huh? No!" Tidus backpedalled, alarmed that he'd been heard. "Just… some person I met here in Traverse Town a couple of months back. I don't know if there's even a person like that on my islands." He got up and skipped out onto the street, turning around to say: "Thanks for the dinner, Miss Spider. It was great."

"Don't thank me," Miss Spider said with a smile. "It's our business. Serving you has been our pleasure."

"Looks like we're leaving," Kiki said, picking up her broom and bag and following Tidus into the square.

Alana waved goodbye to the maître d' and followed suit. She strode ahead of the others, kicking her legs out and swinging netted hands behind her. "So, where should we go now?"

"Isn't it late?" Tidus pointed out, looking up to the sky for the moon.

"Hey, this is First District! The night's just getting started. It's not like you have to work tomorrow."

Tidus grinned. "I guess not. Well, I haven't been here before so is there any place you'd recommend?"

"Hm… actually, I heard there was a new craftsman who got a shop somewhere in this district," Alana mused. "Apparently he specialises in clocks but also makes these really wonderful dolls and puppets. I want to check out his shop since we're here."

"Sorry, but I have to go," Kiki apologised, fidgeting with her broom handle. "I have to work my delivery business tomorrow morning. I would love to hang out with you some more, I really would."

"Don't sweat it," Tidus said, waving his hand sympathetically. "You come around the Gizmo Shop often enough. We can catch up some other time."

The little girl smiled. "Okay, I wi—wait!" she gasped. She turned her head left and right frantically. "Jiji?"

"Jiji?" Tidus echoed. "I thought you said your cat was missing."

"Didn't you hear that?" Kiki asked, walking around the group and checking behind the weird lampposts looking at the ground the whole time. "I heard a cat scream for help. It might have been Jiji."

Alana and Tidus exchanged confused glances. Tidus just shook his head while Alana started to think of the easiest way to calm Kiki down. Before any words could leave their mouths, they heard a cat's screech. Kiki's head snapped to the corner beside the restaurant. Tidus and Alana saw her look and turned their gazes there just as a black cat sprinted around the corner and along the wall. A low rumble and a few short bangs followed as a green van skidded around the corner… a very familiar green van with mismatching headlamps.

"I think I got 'im now, Jasper!" Horace shouted, swiping at the cat with a net on a long pole but he missed by a mile as the van swerved. The engine whined, the tyres squealed and the exhaust boomed like a gunshot. "Easy there!"

"I'm doing the best I can! Them shonky fix-its at the Gizmo Shop didn't fix this thing right."

The van curved in a wide, uncontrolled arc. Kiki leaped onto her broom straight away, chasing after the cat herself. Tidus and Alana had to dive out of the way. To avoid getting hit by Horace and Jasper's van.

"If that's the way they drive it then it's no wonder it was broken," Alana muttered, lifting herself up and checking her elbows for grazes. She jolted at the sudden blare of police sirens. Both tinkermen scrambled to their feet as a police motorcycle with a sidecar came around the corner just as fast but with more control.

The cat was struggling to get up the wall beside the item shop. It turned its head and saw the van approaching side on. Horace was leaning over the driver's side to hang out of the car, obscuring Jasper's view. The thinner man was wiggling the steering wheel back and forth with no idea where he was going. The cat scrabbled madly to make it over those last few inches when suddenly it was picked up under the belly. Kiki fully intended to grab the cat and run for it but a net suddenly came down over her head, knocking her from the broomstick. Meanwhile, the cat had gained enough leverage from her attempt to make it over the wall and dart away around the corner. The van slowed down and then stalled. It tipped dangerously over the netted witch.

"Get off me!" Jasper growled, shoving Horace into the passenger seat, balancing the van.

"Did I get it?" Horace asked.

"Nah, you idiot! All you caught was some scrawny witch. You can't even make sausages out of that!"

The police bike skidded to a halt and the driver leaped out of the seat. His passenger took the time to remove her helmet before following him, taking two long, shiny white guns with her. Seeing her face clearly, Tidus recognised them as the officers they crossed paths with a week before.

"You two, step out of the vehicle now!" Steve ordered. He was unarmed but Noel was there quickly to back him up. The engine thrummed and stammered as Jasper tried to start the engine again. "I said step out of the vehicle!"

Jasper slammed the steering wheel in defeat. He folded his arms and turned to Horace. "Well, it looks like the jig is up, eh?"

The brothers looked at each other. Jasper had the smarmy expression of someone who had something else in mind and Horace just looked confused. Jasper shoved him out the door and inconspicuously snatched something from the glove box on his way out. Noel and Steve closed in on them, ready to make the arrest. Without even putting up their hands in mock-surrender, Jasper rolled a small metal ball at their feet. It exploded in a bright flash of white light that blinded the whole square. Noel squeaked and fired a shot at random. It hit a shop sign, sending it swinging. Tidus lowered the arm shielding his eyes and looked around quickly. Jasper and Horace were making their getaway around the corner they'd come from.

"Hey! Hold it!" he yelled, taking off after them.

"Tidus!" Alana called. Her vision was still dotted with bright colours but she managed to follow Tidus around the corner. "Where are you going?"

"Down there!" Tidus pointed to large doors at the end of the street that the crooks were disappearing into. He grabbed Alana by the hand and led her. "They'll get away if we don't catch up. Hurry!"

Tidus didn't really give her much choice on that last one. They charged into the unfamiliar backstreets of Traverse Town.

Meanwhile, Kiki threw the net off herself and groaned as something ached when she shifted. A strong hand grabbed her by the shoulders and lifted her to her feet.

"Are you okay?" Steve asked, handing her the broomstick as she wiped some of the dirt off her dress.

"I think so," she replied. She accepted her broom and looked at the top of the wall thoughtfully. That black cat hadn't been Jiji but sounded a lot like him. "Why were they chasing that poor guy?"

Steve shook his head. "I'm not sure who they are. But they left their van. I radioed the details of the vehicle to HQ, they'll be able to ID it."

"Um, Sergeant!" Noel called from the back of the van.

"Noel, that shot you fired earlier was far too reckless," Steve admonished. "You need to work on keeping your trigger finger more controlled. You could have harmed a bystander."

"I-I'm sorry! I'll remember that. But I think there's something in here…"

Kiki followed Steve to the back of the van where Noel was nervously eyeing the doors of the trunk. There was scratching and yowling coming from inside. Kiki furrowed her eyebrows at the strangely suspicious yet familiar sound. Steve frowned.

"Stand back. I'll open the door slowly. Be ready for whatever comes out." He was about to open one door but Kiki suddenly shoved herself in front of him and grabbed both handles. She threw the doors open and was suddenly swarmed by a wave of black cats.

"I knew it!" she exclaimed, catching as many of them as she could and cuddling them. "Cats! I knew it sounded like cats! It's okay, little ones. You're all safe now. Where did you all come from?"

Cats scampered all over the square. Steve and Noel stared at them in bewilderment and exchanged glances. Kiki gasped. "Officers! These cats were stolen!"

Steve gave Kiki a sceptical look but in his head he already believed her. "How do you know?"

"The cats are telling me," Kiki said. She held up one plump cat, "This big fella lives in Fourth District with a tax accountant. And this sassy young lady," she held up a sleek, slim cat, "lives with a dame in Fifth District. But they were all snatched while they were out walking on the streets. Those guys were catnappers!"

"That's only more reason to chase them down," Noel said determinedly.

"They certainly fit the profile of the thieves we're looking for," Steve agreed. "And I caught sight of them going down to the backstreets; those civilian kids went after them. This is a tricky situation. How are we going to catch up to them?"

"If they're in the backstreets they'll eventually wind up in Fountain Square," Kiki told them. "I know a shortcut there if you cut through the post room. I'll show you."

Kiki dropped her cats and led them over to the post box. She knocked on it and it wiggled a bit before saying:

"Kiki! Are you delivering for me tonight too?"

"Sorry Mr Postbox, not tonight. I need you to let us into the post room. The police are after some crooks."

"Well, then I won't get in your way," the post box said, hopping to the side and revealing the manhole leading into the postal headquarters. "Just don't mess up the order of things."

"We won't touch anything," Kiki promised. Then she turned to the police officers and said: "Follow me."

The three of them jumped into the manhole one-by-one. The post box shuffled back into place**.**


End file.
